Bokelskere.no

Impatience was a trait you developed in the lower forty-eight, an attribute that a child who grew up here didn't possess. Time wasn't the same on the tundra; it stretched to elastic lengths and snapped back fast when you weren't looking. The only things that really operated on a schedule were school and church, and most Yupiit were late to those anyway.

Superheroes were born in the minds of people desperate to be rescued. The first, and arguably the most legendary, arrived in the 1930s, care of Shuster and Siegel, two unemployed, apprehensive Jewish immigrants who couldn't get work at a newspaper. They imagined a loser who only had to whip off his glasses and step into a phone booth to morph into a paragon of manliness, a world where the geek got the girl at the end. The public, reeling from Depression, embraced Superman, who took them away from a bleak reality.

Life could take on any number of shapes while you were busy fighting your own demons. But if you were changing at the same rate as the person beside you, nothing else really mattered. You became each other's constant.

The tears you shed over a child were not the same as any others. They burned your throat and your corneas. They left you blind.

Relationships always sounded so physically painful: You fell in love, you broke a heart, you lost your head. Was it any wonder that people came through the experience with battle scars? The problem with a marriage - or maybe its strength - was that it spanned a distance, and you were never the same person you started out being. If you were lucky, you could still recognize each other years later. If you weren't, you wound up in your office with a boy fifteen years younger than you were, pouring his heart into your open hands.

Betrayal was a stone beneath the mattress of the bed you shared, something you felt digging into you no matter how you shifted position. What was the point of being able to forgive, when deep down, you both had to admit you'd never forget?

You signed no contract to become a parent, but the responsibilities were written in invisible ink. There was a point when you had to support your child, even if no one else would. It was your job to rebuild the bridge, even if your child was the one who burned it in the first place.

There was a fine line between love and hate, you heard that cliché all the time. But no one told you that the moment you crossed it would be the one you least expected. You'd fall in love and crack open a secret door to let your soul mate in. You just never expected such closeness, one day, to feel like an intrusion.

You couldn't have strength without weakness; you couldn't have light without dark; you couldn't have love without loss.

When your significant other was missing, it wasn't the same bed. There was a void on the other side, a cosmic black hole, one that you couldn't roll too close to without falling into a chasm of memories.