He would send a photo to me.
I would send one to him.
He’d say he wished I was sitting next to him.
I would send him a picture of our two photos together and say: “I am!”

Our love. It was such an audacious thing. Full of hope and faith.
From a man who spoke profoundly of these things…

“I must confess, my friends, the road ahead will not always be smooth. There will still be rocky places of frustration and…inevitable setbacks. There will be those moments when the buoyancy of hope will be transformed into the fatigue of despair. Our dreams will sometimes be shattered. … Difficult and painful as it is, we must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future…” ~MLK

I love you, Carl, even more completely than this audacious distance.

{originally published Jan 19, 2015}