One Break-Up

You break up with someone you love. For a long time you feel disoriented, angry, and devastated. But when it softens he is the man next to you while your father was actively dying-while he was too weak and drugged with morphine to sip from a straw, so the man you loved soaked a sponge in water and brought it to his lips over and over until the cup emptied. This is who he is. You watched him grow into this. You loved him into this.