I am carrying something I cannot put down.

You have turned it over more times than you would admit. The wrong done to you, or the one you did. It arrives on an ordinary afternoon, uninvited, and being reasonable about it has never once made it let go.

Here is what almost no one says. A grip this old is rarely about them anymore. It has become something you carry about yourself, and it is charging you the present to keep paying for the past.

You are allowed to set it down. Not to say it was fine, and not to forget. To put down a weight you were never meant to carry this far, so that your hands are free for what comes next.