We have to be content with the missed paths.

The times you have connected with this one or that one, and you know

that circumstance and selfishness steers you from intimacy.

You cannot mourn the ways in which you could have known the preciousness that is the complexity and story and life-arcs of these people

who amaze you with their existence, and the ways in which they have both chosen and been created selves.

The squelching of the
spiritual portion of what is a human;

is more than the necrosis of a small body part,
or the headaches that angels sacrificing your pleasure for
some heavenly vision can bring.

It is the starvation of a soul in its entirety (for what is a soul if not spiritual?)