Early in the morning you enter my mind.

It happens like this: I’ll be sitting outside and the reclining light of a near full moon will glance off my shoulder onto my fingers and let me, make me, work these keys to find the song that will change your life.

Then, by breakfast, those words, that very tune, will slide off my toast and land on the floor sticky side down, leaving me to scour the oh-so-sober morning for meaning, for reasons, for something to give you, tell you, show you, relieve you, strengthen you, heal you.

By the afternoon, the moon is a lie, the sun is a tin ball, rolling in grey, the wind is bending windows and I see cold rain hit your back like a shotgun.

Nothing is fair.

And while I’m here, let me be clear: this attempt to bring you a galloping word to ride in the pink of a new dawn, also signals my weakness, my denial, my fear for what comes to us all. And these lines full of arms that try to hug you across the miles—might be as much for me as for you.

But know this: though frail, I will stay faithful.

For all the days of your darkness, all the dangers of earth and sky, all the dirty corners in all those clinics, all the shadows that rattle against your evening shutters, all the hunger you can’t fill, and the hunger you don’t feel, for all the sleepless middles-of-nights, waiting for light at the edge of your curtain, I will never not think of you, never not pray you rise to the given day, never not carry a weight for you, never abandon you.