Reflection

I peer through a sliver of space between the slats of bamboo covering my window. A circle of white with craters like holes in Swiss cheese is outlined by an incandescent halo. Is the moon three-quarters full or one-quarter empty? I ponder this for a moment. The answer is neither because fractions are measurements, and measurements are constructs. We created amounts because quantity is easier to value than quality. I digress. I glance at my wall on which hangs an art print from a long-lost lover. There's something about a grayscale illustration - black, white, all shades in between. The absence of color is morbidly beautiful. A stem - two flowers attached - extends into leaves, branches downward, and splits into lungs with bronchioles like roots. Connected is a diagram of the human heart. As I observe it, I ruminate on how closely it represents my relationship with her. We grew together, and then we grew apart. We shared a heartbeat and breaths as two in one. My love, my love, my one and only love - we shattered each other into a million shards of glass, each reflecting different facets of ourselves. I was blind, like the blinds separating me from the waning Gibbous moon. In hindsight I recognize we were a quantity without quality. Yes, quantity is a construct; but constructs are how we connect - how we relate to each other's realities. The reality of us is we were one-quarter empty.