I held the ring in my palm.
It was a simple thing.
Silver-toned, thin, with a small clear stone that had cost almost nothing.
I had bought it the week before the wedding, not knowing what size to get, and it had turned out to be slightly too large.
Eleanor had laughed about that.
She had held it up and said, *It’s perfect.
I always wanted a little room to grow.*
I thought about the notebook in my bag.
The storage unit full of forty years of letters.
The photograph taken outside my old office building on a day I had no memory of, a day I had been laughing at something on my phone while a woman stood on the pavement across the street and chose not to go in.
I thought about what it meant to love someone that carefully.
To want so much and ask for so little.
