Last week I felt weighed down by a disappointment that even now is hard to articulate. It has happened before, and yet somehow I forget and try again as if somehow it will turn out differently. 

I made a stab, obliquely, at expressing it to someone, but they were distracted with their own perfectly valid concerns. It felt like when we went to Disneyland, and brought a cooler packed with drinks and sandwiches but all of the lockers were full. We ended up carrying it. After three hours it had gained fifty pounds. I shouldered my pain like a burden. 

Later I dropped a hint to a friend that the morning had not gone well but her train of thought ran through like an express line. I kept packing. 

Then a dear cousin, a life long confidant, paused to hear me. She looked at me with no judgment, no hint that I should hurry. Her eyes held me while I set down my sadness at her feet. She did not run away. 

Time stopped while she listened, as if she had nothing else to do but hear me. When I was finished, the hurt stayed on the floor.

But I felt like I could fly away.