Shooting Star

On some days you'd come home drained of all the hope that you held all these days. Wrecked and picked by the world. On days that you don't miss the sun because you've lost the last memory you had of that morning when you picked up the broken pieces of your courage, placed them carefully in your backpack and moved out with those shaken shoulders. That was the day I not only watched you move out of the house, but out of yourself.  And for long I held you inside of me, hiding you deep inside for the fear of losing the only essence of you that was left in that place that we called home. And when I watch you come home today, and serve you dinner, I know that across the table I sit with a stranger, and stranger thoughts in my head. I look down at my hands and think. Maybe I'm losing the cells that had you hidden beneath. And with them maybe I'm losing the man across the table,  who's so drenched, so vulnerable, so tired. I realize not everyone can be saved. Not always from themselves.