"Have you ever loved a Black woman?"

Julian Davis's question continues to rattle through my brain, its initial asking striking me in a way that I couldn't quite account for at the time. Honestly, I don't know that I can figure it out even now. Not that I haven't been trying. I have been desperately trying.

It wasn't just the question. It was the way he posed it. The look on his face at the time. The emotion and the history, and the levity of it, heavy with the memory of more than just the romantic glimmer surrounding the word 'love'. His question held the gravity of an emotion that meant more than flowery words, and gestures. Songs sung on a gondola under an Italian moon. Touches, gentle and rough, against skin sweetened by the sweat of sex. Instead, it was a sentiment imbued with the more than a feeling. On Mr. Davis's face, behind the dark brown of his eyes, and the furrowed ridge of his brow, was a charge to reconcile within myself how I truly felt, and what bridge I was willing to cross to commit to that feeling.

Even the coward in me has been unable to synthesize the words to express quietly, secretly to myself, or even to Helen, this feeling. This emotion. This love, that I undoubtedly have for her.

But my actions? My actions should have said plenty I think, except, I guess they don't. The chasm that's grown between us as I've dashed from one thing to the next indicates that she's hasn't noticed what I'm working at.

When I told Helen I wanted to make the world better for Luna, and for her, I meant that. It's what all of these seemingly altruistic and earnest attempts to make substantive changes at the hospital have been all about. I'm an adult. I live in this damaged world. I know you can't just fix centuries of oppression and mistreatment by changing the name of a hospital, but... it's what I have. Some small thing that I can control. It's what I can come to terms with right now. It's the tiny bit of something I can offer to move the needle on my declaration to her. To make her world right. Better.

At least in part, because the true root of that need, that visceral urge to fix something for Helen is based in a truth more hurtful than anything I have been able to tackle as of yet. Seemingly, at least to me, more insurmountable than fixing institutional racism, sexism, ageism. All of the horrific isms. Underneath all of this corrective action is an honest inability to address the one thing I can't yet offer to Helen, or maybe even to Luna, and that's a whole, fully realized Max.

A Max that is ready to remove the wedding ring that shackles me to a memory of another person. Another woman I couldn't fix things for. I couldn't be the person that Georgia needed. The husband. The partner she deserved. My own selfish ambitions and needs obscuring the pathway to actually being that person.

And, I fear that the cycle continues.

Every time that I leave Luna with my mother-in-law, after she has traversed the subway system all the way from Connecticut to care for her granddaughter. Every morning, and evening.

Each night that Luna falls asleep without me being present to read to her. To play with her. To listen to her baby voice babble and chit chat in her own whimsical cadence of mispronounced words and laughter.

And every day that I have to watch the woman. The Black woman that I love, hug, kiss, and dance away from me, in the arms of another man. Her tiny feet carrying her in sweeping steps to sway against him, her body pressed close to his. Her lips curving seductively at who knows what. Naughty remembrances of a night they shared. Inside jokes that live and make sense in only their exclusive world apart from the one she once somewhat shared with me.

I can't deny that we have grown apart. Not just because of her romantic entanglements outside of our friendship. She's stepped down as my right hand, my go to person who was always there for me. And that was a part of the problem wasn't it? That she was always there for me. Did everything for me. For me. But how have I been there for her? How have I been her right hand? Her person? Again, I know my faults. An honest account will rack up my transgressions. Selfish. Myopic. Single-minded. Stubborn.

My loss of Georgia, and the last year, the pandemic have taught me a lesson though. Life is short. Fleeting. Ones existence as tenuous as the billowy cotton-like fibers of a weed whose seedlings are susceptible to get blown away with the carelessness of the wind. Dislodged from what anchors it to the earth. Forgotten and replaced by a barrage of new weeds, ready to take root in the displaced ones' space. I'd witnessed it in my own life. Paid homage to it as a part of my life's work. The macabre shadow of the pandemic pushing me past my own stoic stubbornness to remain fixated on what I have lost, and reach towards what I had found.

I'm doing that. I'm trying. I'm...making an earnest attempt to gingerly walk through the door to what's next, and part of that is figuring out how to love her. To meet her where she is. In this moment. I've been following Helen's advice on what she sardonically dubbed my 'listening tour'. Hearing others. Her. Not just asking how I can help. But listening to and receiving their responses, not always readily responding with a solution. Their frustrations. Their needs are more complicated than that. Her need to be seen, understood, her pain acknowledged. Her hurt and anger at how she's experienced the world, stark in the anxious frustrations that twist her beautiful features. Ardent in the halting feedback from patients who have deigned to share their own stories. From those marching and protesting for their simple right to exist.

I'm...getting it. Things are changing. I'm changing.

And maybe...just maybe, I wondered, as I dumbfoundedly stared at the door that Helen quickly shuttered as she ushered me from her office, and the helpful declaration from her niece that she and Cassian were no longer together...maybe everything is changing? Can we be different? Helen and I? Can this love that I carry for her, help me evolve past my own doubts about my ability to love again? To be whole enough to give myself to Helen. A gift that is a lot easier promise to make good on than changing the world.

Hope blossoms in my heart as all of these thoughts, ruminations skip through my mind. Bolden my gaze upon her pretty face after we hug, the very closeness of her body to mine, lighting my fire in the most indecent of private ways as we are standing on this very public roof. My eyes drink her in, watching the wind dance through her hair. Create a slight pinkish blush to the rounded apples of her cheeks. The flush reminiscent of life's touch that I have seen brighten the beauty of her brown skin for years now. Even more akin I think to myself, to the tinted glow of a woman who is loved.

I have loved this woman. I love this woman. Have loved her for some time now. Warmth, a pleasant tingle engulfs me with the realization, even as the cool weather cuts through me a bit, the juxtaposition enlivening the thrill of the moment. I'm drinking her in, greedy to finally have arrived here, at this time, this place, at the same time, our hearts seemingly connected, my eyes consuming her in a sweep from her pink lips to her eyes, then back again. This heat that flowers in my gut urges the fingers of my right hand to retreat from where I've held onto Helen, and instead to secretly hurry to circle and grasp, a gentle twisting and pull of my wedding ring. I'm ready. Right now. This minute. And I pull, and tug, unmarry myself from a memory of an old life, relief swaddling me as I feel the cool metal abandon my finger and rest in my palm, as I easily drop it into my pocket.

I'm free now. She's free now. The handcuffs of her previous relationships have been removed. My attachment to the old Max, the married Max, now lies in the bottom of my pocket. And my heart grows full for her as I decide to kiss her, but I hesitate, wondering only briefly if I should. In that moment of vacillation, where I don't follow my instincts...again, Helen's lips form to tell me, to declare in a painful jab to my heart, "I'm really glad that we're friends."

Friends.

Blinking, my brain lags at Helen's use of the word, and I slowly, imperceptibly drag my leaden arm, now heavy with the gravity of that word, and place my shackle back into place. A guard for my heart to exist imprisoned by the reality of things.

Friends.