Suddenly I’ve been flooded with reminders that life does, in fact, change in an instant.
And even if it’s not an instant, it is changed irrefutably and irrevocably. Only that if we stopped to think about this fact, we’d be overcome with so much grief and sorrow we’d find it hard to get out of bed in the morning.
A week ago somehow seems like an eternity ago– or perhaps like it might have only happened in a parallel universe where you alone dreamed or nightmared it up.
Only that it did happen. The scar is barely forming. The ribs are still tender and sore and cracked. The jeans are ripped but are already clean and put away. The pale veins seem crossed by a paler, creamy tattoo. The flesh sags– first just a little, then bit by bit it catches up and continues its graceless topple downward.
The scar turns purple, then fades to silvery white. It doesn’t go away, but it leaves its mark.
The newborn whose fists were two tiny flowers –too delicate to even kiss– runs down the street and yells and gives you high-fives.
The songs that kept you company through the rain and the storm and the not-another-year-alone come back, still angst-ridden and sad. There is a hopeful note, but you only notice it ten years later.
Because you can remember ten years ago and it is not a hazy memory, tainted by the indolence of childhood time-passing. Ten years ago you were filled with doubt and self-loathing laced with invincibility, but it was all premeditated and known.
The years keep marking higher and higher. Do we know how to count? We do.
Do we want to keep counting? Sometimes not so much.
But keep counting we must.
A Daily Dose of Zen Sarcasm! 
I don’t know why, exactly, this post speaks so much to where I am right now, but it does. Thank you.
And here I am for the first four paragraphs thinking, ‘omg was she in an accident?’
Dense.
such a beautiful, wonderfully introspective post.