It was still early March. The clocks, having advanced just a few days before, pushed the sun forward an hour like an incoming tide, forcing us to reset our chairs away from the dawn’s darkly waters. It was the day after her treatment, a slower morning, and we had just finished a noonish breakfast of fried eggs and toast. We wallowed about on the porch, enjoying the warming part of the day, a soaking in after so much taking out. And that is when I left her.

I searched amongst the trees that lined her sun-edged yard; the seeking, hunter, gatherer, stable, sure-footed boy in love, picking through an undergrowth of branches and twigs and leaves. Within the mundane, the oft-forgotten and the easily gotten are surely missed. But here in the brush was the thing that caught my eye. It was coupled, attached, tethered to itself, serene in its stability. A bit of brown-gray variegated bark reaching out to me from a mid-life tree.

I pulled at the tiny, brittle thing; this rugged rind. I felt the curled and ragged husk tug back before giving way. Once I had peeled it apart from its comfort, I fingered the scab, this single-inch shaving of tree crust, this square of simple complexity, this shedding of existence made artifact. On its reverse, there were hints of its once-connected-ness to life, so much like our own: wanting to be touched; alive until it is not; a secreted puzzle piece that somehow fits in somewhere and without which an infinite jigsaw universe remains undone. I was happy to have found it. And when I returned, I kissed her and felt her soft, gentle skin against mine.

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