Kintsugi (#9)

I’m writing the story of my life in fragments. These are the memories that stuck.

2024

The boy’s small figure slips out of the supermarket’s front doors. He is looking for someone. 

It can’t be me; this boy does not even know I exist. Yet I already feel like I know him and his brother, and in a moment, when I walk through those same front doors, I know exactly what I’ll find.

I have been in love with their mother for a year. I have seen pictures of these boys’ creations, counseled her about their behavior, seen their young bodies from a distance more than once. 

I greet their eyes as I introduce myself, and we start traversing the store, a sudden quartet, in search of the ingredients of that night’s dinner.

The boys offer me small windows into their world while we walk, stones of meaning fished deep from their pockets. Henry came to this same store the night of his first-ever sleepover. Charlie has four best friends. 

Their mother and I steal glances at each other when we can; I surreptitiously touch the back of her neck. 

We head upstairs to the apartment where my 11-year-old is waiting for our arrival. The five of us sit around a makeshift table to share our first meal together: a new constellation of life-force, each face freshly streaked by a love we have only just begun to feel.