Eat the Bread While It Is Warm

The sun has dipped below the line, and the room is filling with the gray that makes every shadow look like a warning. You are sitting at a table with good things—warmth, a quiet moment, a loved one's hand—but you cannot taste them.

Your muscles are tight. You are bracing.

You are waiting for the floor to drop out, convinced that if you stop watching the horizon, the storm will take you by surprise. There was a man once who stood on a mountain and saw his life's work, only to be told it would all be torn down.

He did not rage. He did not run to build a fortress.

He simply went down and ate. The light does not ask you to ignore the coming dark.

It asks you to eat the bread that is here, now, while it is still warm. The grief you are feeling is just love with nowhere to go because you are trying to protect yourself from the end before the end has even arrived.

You are holding your breath in a room that is still full of air. The thing you fear losing is already a gift, not a loan.

The light is not in the future where you are afraid to look. It is in the bite of the food.

It is in the breath you are refusing to take. You do not have to be strong enough to survive the loss tonight.

You only have to be soft enough to receive the presence that is already here.