Duality

Sadness and joy often inhabit
the same moment, a counter balance.

I had just finalized my divorce
and moved into a home of my own,
signing the papers for the house
on my daughter’s fifteenth birthday.

I could not celebrate her birth,
nor mourn the death of a marriage,
as the children would be away with their father
for the first time since the divorce.

Melancholy welled up as I sat
in my nearly empty home
on the futon that was
then my only furniture.

Sensing my sadness,
my dog Ginger cuddled up on my left,
and Black Magic, the cat,
on my right.

Both gazed upward at my face
with twin expressions that said
“Don’t worry, it’ll be alright,”
and suddenly,
inexplicably, it was.