Then and Again, I Love You Forever

Hemingway says, “Write the truest sentence you know.”
I think what is true is suddenly felt,
like your eyes widening in silence
as I walk past the light in the room.

The truest sentence I know
is about a train leaving a small, unnamed stop,
and the life it ended, and the lives it started.
But that is for another poem.

It is that the same thing can be beautiful everyday,
and there is terror in the smallest act of love, knowing life is finite.
The truest sentence I know begins on a bicycle -
I am following my daughter on her way to the store
I’m going to see how far she’ll go, she’s four.
and ends with my cheek on your forehead,
no part of us disconnected in sleep.

It has words like remembrance and big toe.
It describes the mystery of a plain white egg.
The truest sentence I know is that sometimes it doesn’t get better;
but hope is the air that fills our liquid lungs.