Love is a red thread that pulls us through (Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer)

When my teacher told me 

Everything we love can 

and will be taken from us, 

I did not know how she 

was preparing in me 

a synaptic path. 

I understood her words 

in the way one understands a journey 

by reading a map. 

Now, ten years later, with every breath 

I travel this path of loss 

as so many others have before me, 

and yet there is no trail, no signposts, 

no destination, and the path changes direction 

from moment to moment. 

But the path does not feel foreign. 

Every turn of it is paved with truth— 

Everything we love can and will be taken from us. 

Those words now offer 

the strange comfort of prophecy 

as I wander these trails of impermanence, 

stunned with gratitude even as I weep, 

alive with loving what doesn’t last, 

astonished by the enormity of love— 

how love is the red thread that pulls us through, 

not a thread to follow, 

but a guide that never, ever leaves the path. 

--Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer,     

The Journey of Love       

Image source: https://biljanaognenova.com/2017/08/13/red-thread-the-invisible-string-interconnecting-all-women/