Is it alright if I call you that? It seems more familiar that anything else. This week I learnt your story. I want to say I learnt it in its entirety, but I cannot say for certain whether that is true or not, and I feel like in this particular moment we should speak only in truths. Or maybe we should just speak in certainties, which is entirely different from truths but still carries a heft with it.

Consuela told me your story. It took her a whole month. She did it in whispered hushes just before I fell asleep; she did it in gentle tones as I sunk into the hot water of a bath; she did it in an urgent clip as I moved through airports, traffic, and trains. She lulled me into the story, much as I imagined that Columbus’s ships lulled him to sleep on an ocean in the middle of the night, much as I imagine your own story lulled you through the turbulence of life. And finally, it ended almost as abruptly as it had started. I cried for hours after I learned your story. You are fortunate to have Consuela tell your story, Columbus, for she knows all the nuances of a human tragedy, all the intricacies of a mind devastated in love and then regaining its footing. She does you justice. And so I cried.

Columbus, it wasn’t until the next morning and I was driving to work that I realized I still had the tears on my glasses. I cleaned them away, but the story doesn’t disappear so easily. It seems that it has seeped into my bones, melded itself into my pulse. And so, last night I dreamt of loss and a sea and you. I was standing on rock somewhere and I ask you a question: Can you teach me how to lose gracefully?

In the dream I cannot tell if you answer, but in the morning I look at the question I had scribbled on the notepad beside my bed and I am almost certain that you said, “yes.” This is a reason to hope.

All my best.