February started as any other month would. Shaun decided to leave me with just enough room on the bed to fit my profile. I started my usual morning routine. I picked up a book. I read. When Shaun woke up, we played, danced, and ate. He realized that his time was better spent with his cousins, so he abandoned me to my reading while they played in the living room. I flipped through several issues of Batman Eternal, Nailbiter, and a few other titles that haven’t been picked up in months. Jeanna sent me a text asking me to hold on to Shaun for a little while longer and drop him off sometime during the evening. I buried my face in Tess Gerritsen’s Die Again. I drank Kool-Aid in my mom’s room as some banal tween sitcom on Nick played as white noise. I sent texts to Jenny. I replied to texts from coworkers and friends. I scrolled through Tumblr. And as I remember what a perfect month this would be (a month of four even weeks), I realized that it was the first of February. It took me most of the day for it to dawn on me what significance the day once held. Had we been together, it would have marked the twelfth anniversary with Jeanna.
The past two years, I spent the day in a catatonic state. I still mourned the loss of the relationship. There were moments during this three-year road where I thought I healed. I wrote proclamations about my strength. Mistook infatuations for romance. Nothing, however, lasted.
And I don’t think getting here would have been possible without the help of someone like Jenny. And while the strength of letting go came from within, she has been my guide through it all. And it happened the last night she was in Edinburg. That night at the park. Where she and Canaan crawled through the tube at the playground. And I stood at the opposite end. Crawling through tubes isn’t my bag. Especially when wet mulch lines the floor. Claustrophobic and a germaphobe, it didn’t matter. I wanted to stand beside them. Just wanted to hold her hand. I knew what this relationship would entail. I knew the hardships that would follow. And none of it mattered. Not the years spent and lost with Jeanna. Not Selina. Not anything that plagued my mind for all those years past. At that moment, I just wanted to build something with the girl on the other side of the tube.
So on first of the month, after I realized the significance it once held, I smirked into my phone. I opened my book and continued reading after sending a text to Jenny.
Chapin City Blues 
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