On a whim…

Job 7:6 NRSV “My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle,
and come to their end without hope.”

It was discovered at night.

One evening the bed was warm with love. The familiar weight beside me. Breath in the dark. The small adjustments two bodies make without thinking.

The next night, the covers on one side remained untouched.

No memory announced itself. No image arrived. This was not recollection. It was discovery. The body noticed the cold where warmth had been and understood something before the mind formed words.

Time did not move forward the way it was supposed to. It folded. The then of yesterday pressed directly into the now of tonight. The difference was not conceptual. It was measurable—in inches, in temperature, in the reach of an arm that met nothing.

Job does not soften this kind of knowing. He does not search for meaning. He marks the speed at which life unravels and leaves the ache intact. The text does not rush to comfort him. It lets the night stand.

I lay there longer than necessary, noticing what was no longer there. The body registering absence as carefully as it had once registered presence.

Some truths are not remembered.
They are re-encountered.

Absence does not stay in the past.
It waits to be discovered again.

Prayer God, stay near when absence feels new all over again.