Warmth

My heart has been a heavy place as of late...I know it's not mine...this ache within me...but for days I've worn it like a scarf around my neck...I can't take it off, but fortunately it matches everything I wear...the black sorrow of it blending in like it was meant to be there always...It's so subtle and soft that I forget I wear it for hours at a time...but then once again I feel the weight of it...and struggling to breath seek the identity of its owner...Today the discovery was made...it doesn't belong to just one...there are many...all of them people I love, though the length of time I've had the opportunity to do so varies as greatly as the fabric the scarf is made of...

One a friend I've known for a good length of time...heart breaking over choices made and pasts colliding...the construction of a castle on the remains of a fortress not long before toppled...debris and ruin inadequately removed now litter the land scape where their two hearts hope to build...they instead tear down each other...their sorrow sullied with shades of gray...unable to define what they should be or how to proceed...so much wrapped in the hopes of healing that hasn't yet happened...the clearing of the littered landscape so desperately needed to anchor their worlds...the circle continues of fear and hurt and frustration and anger...the love that was and could be diminishing even as they strive to keep it...so alone even together...Charcoal gray, the weave of their fabric...so much unknown between the past and today and all that tomorrow holds...

Another I've known for mere weeks...My first day on the job he was there...my new friend immediately...European and sassy as hell...efiminant in a way ONLY a European male can get away with, without the backhanded whispers...

-is he...?
-Do you think maybe...?
-He might be...?
-No, he's just European.

It was his birthday...it was mid afternoon and he'd been at a bar for hours already when he called...asking me to join him...by the time I arrived he had a plate of hot wings and a bottle of Fantome half consumed from a Chamay glass...He was drunk and made me swear not to judge...He's one of my favorites here...funny and peculiar... melancholy drives him...wraps around him like a cloak...every inch of his body wears it like a tattoo etched in so deeply that no amount of laser removal surgery will ever take it away...this is how I find him...and his smile so pure...and begging that I not think less of him for the state in which I find him...as if I ever could...this tender heart dwelling in my new dear friend...we drink and laugh and chat with the assortment of good old boy regulars beside us at the bar...a few puffs of American Spirit then out the door...off to his favorite book store...to find music by his favorite composer...pros by his favorite poet...he reads a few to me...poems of love...and they move him...he clutches his heart and puts the small volume away...rushing in his whirlwind way to another shelf where Goethe waits silently...as if happening upon the remains of a beloved friend he removes the book from the shelf, touching the pages...his eyes consuming the words like a feast...'may I read you my favorite part?' and he does...and the words like songs...painful and true...drip from his tongue as he breathes them...though they are not from memory, they are written on his heart...the longing for this love...the ache of the end...when one knows that the love once given is not enough to live for if it does not grow and yield more life...and his eyes rimmed now with glittering moisture...'may I buy you this book?' he asks...on his birthday he buys me a book...the few lines he read were not enough...he needs me to know the words and love them as he does because it's the only way I will see this part of his heart...so I will read it, and we will talk about it...and all the while the shades of midnight blue that weave through the fabric of his wrapped around my neck...twisting between the charcoal gray...


Another I've known for years...so few days we've actually spent together, but still we are kindred spirits...quarky and perfectly matched in our love of all things untypical...we know each other well for the insufficient time together....we are so similar and so different and it makes us that much closer...but the sorrow I see in her brings an ache to my heart...I feel it as if it were mine...it has been so often...mossy green is her color, threading it's way silently between the others...unassuming but bold...she is there those who know her delight in her wit and love...we're all laughing at the jokes she tells with tears rolling down her face...so few see it...the cloud that she carries...she bears it well...but I've seen the umbrella-ella-ella...even that makes me smile...because it is so much a part of her and such a joyous thing to behold...she hides it from most, but not from me...and wrapped around my neck it rests...the truth, the underlying ache that shades her days...

The other I barely know...he's not even there now...not like he was...but I wear his still, and perhaps will for a long time yet...an unexpected twist in my life's story, but he was there...and at his core, my mirror image...perhaps why it's so easy for him to stay...my flaws were his...that sounds terrible...but he was the reflection of everything I'd rather not be...but know dwells deep within me...cynical and uncaring...hiding the truth...that under all of that piss and vinegar was a man aching for love and someone to be there...someone to take him for all that he was and is and has ever been...even the very people he drives away he longs to keep near...a scarlet strand woven through...just a tiny span of time...but such a bold detail laced into the fabric of this sorrow...

I feel them now...these friends I love...there are more...and in my joy I hold them tight...knowing that I can't give much...I can't say much or do much...but I can be...I can love and give what I have...the small thing that it is...I wear them around my neck so they know I cannot forget...that I'm not ashamed...that I am not afraid...that come what may I'll be here...and in turn, no matter the state they are a comfort to me...I find warmth in them even now...knowing that though the circumstances bear so much pain, they are real and they are every bit as much mine to hold as they are theirs...none of us should ever feel alone...life is meant to be worn this way...a comfort and a burden to keep close those we love...and some day they will wear mine as well...many of them have already...this is love...this is a reason we live...

Run Run as Fast as You Can...

I've never been good at pacing myself...all or nothing, now or never, life or death one extreme or another...he seems to be no exception, though I'm trying with everything inside me to just breath and take it one step and one day at a time...it seems I have no choice...the plight of life and the separation of different worlds, different jobs, different circles of friends...someday they may combine but for now his is his and mine is mine and there's no way to lace them together...He is there and I am here and we are both it seems thinking of the other perhaps more often than we realize...I think of him he lets me know...I like to think I catch him thinking of me as well...so new...so much to learn...so much to find...but how can one not love it...these maddening and precious days of discovery...whatever happens, this will only be a limited time offer...my knowledge will only be so small until it has either grown from a seed to a tree or been extinguished all together...dear GOD, please don't let it be the latter...I like this one!!!!  His heart and the sweetness and the gentle words...the way his lip curls just so and he tilts his head before he speaks...all the little things that make him up...so many I still don't know, but a few I've learned and already cherish...that's got to say something right...

of course this is me...I always fall too fast, too hard...too far...But this time, I feel it might be different...even that I've said before...but never with so much fear that it won't be the truth...One day, one step, one moment at a time...I hate being patient...but I'm striving for it...I've wrapped a corset around my heart to keep it sucked in...chains and fetters and cages and layers and layers of close fitting fabrics to keep it at bay...but still it oozes out the sides...the true shape of it...like leaks in a bucket that cannot be corked...maybe that's the way it should be...a dam breaking free...a river raging it's windy way to the vastness of the sea...all the days that pass that I don't see his face...I think they could sap my last ounce of sanity...Silence all day...draining the life from my limbs... then his name on my phone...and I know he thought of me today...maybe he's afraid that I'll forget as well...and everything reminds me of him which always sets me smiling...as if I didn't do that enough...

funny how for years I refused to be any longer a "romantic"...I put that word behind me and refused to even consider it...but it never went far...always, just waiting, laying low for the moment I could not refuse it again...I cannot fight it now...I might, much to my other less sappy self's great shame, watch every chick flick I own...sigh...I suppose I couldn't run forever...

And here I stand...terrified that IF I take too many more steps forward, and IF you do the same, and IF we find ourselves standing very close indeed...the world might stop turning and everything freeze in its place...what then if you change your mind...and I'm left standing alone in a frozen world that no longer turns?  I hate to think of such a scenario, but I will not survive it if I do not let it be a possibility now...at least here I can think it through and make myself remember that the world, if stopped once will start again...and you may wound me, but it won't be my death...I was raised to be stronger than that...but the thought of it now...with so much possibility so close at hand...I suppose I'd rather be a fool full of hope than let the fear of my heart torn to pieces stop me from walking toward you...

Ruins

I find my heart in the middle of the biggest tug-o-war of its life...fear and hope rarely dwell so closely together...Dare I let down my guard and let you in?  Already so many years of built up walls topped with multi-hued broken bottle shard and barbed wire fences, motes and portcullises burning tar heaped on the heads of all who enter...all of it has been one by one dismantled, until now here we stand...a ruin of the fortress that once was...trees and wildflowers, new life growing in it's center...moss on the walls...a carpet of green...all reminders that beauty dwells where once was death and fear...I'm letting you in...forcing out the fear...killing off the last of the hold-backs...At the risk of you leaving, I'm letting you in...I'd rather risk it all and see what happens than never know at all...

The little things that kill

I am amazed at myself lately...not in a good way...not necessarily in a bad way either...just awed at the places my thinking can go and my resolve can break into... few short months ago I know there were things I am willing to allow now, that I would not have dreamed of allowing then...but I sit here and I think about it...the place I was then and where I am now and I find myself questioning how far away I really was from it...and I know looking back, that I was closer than I would have thought...a lot closer...given the right opportunity and the right situation it would have all come down sooner...but it's here now...on the back of weeks of stress and change and newness that the jar was broken...lots of tiny unplanned but somehow carefully calculated baby steps that have created an entire journey to this place...I didn't know where they would lead, and now that I do I don't know how I feel about it all...

I find my brain split in two...one side fully disappointed, the other quite content...one side unwilling to go on with it...the other fully prepared...one side screaming to stop, the other standing with squared shoulders and a set jaw, determined to move forward...I realize that sounds a touch schizophrenic...but I think those are the 2 natures that battle within us...one knowing the right and one wanting the wrong...the redeemed and the fallen...the angel and the devil perched on our shoulders whispering in our ears...at this moment, I don't know which voice is louder...I don't know which is more convincing...I do know that there isn't much time to choose...and if I choose incorrectly...my world will be altered drastically...so...here I stand...leaving out details intentionally...but needing to be as vulnerable as possible...because this not a path I can walk alone...I know I need help...I know I need prayer and wisdom and love...so...throwing that out there...I'm not very good at asking for help...I hate it with everything in me...but...I know I need it direly. 

Chrysalis

I feel it turning...the truth of it all...bubbling and boiling in the cauldron of my soul...I want to let it out...set it free on the wings it was born to fly with...but for now it stays in me...beating it's wings, seeking out it's escape...just building strength for the day it will rise above...I'm weary...exhausted from the fight...so many changes and so few days to let it sink in...this must be the way caterpillars feel in the chrysalis...aching to break free and struggle forth...to breath the air again...to be what they were created to be...so aware of the life just beyond the walls of their cocoon...but still not quite ready to live there...

Perhaps I've already broken the surface...I feel the wind...a change in the rhythms it plays on my skin and I know that this is a new world...a new life...a new journey...and all of the fears that folded me in before are no longer there...and all the fires I'd lit in hopes that maybe the darkness would stay at bay just long enough for me to find a way out of the caves I'd fled to for safety have burned to the end...the light is before me and I'm no longer in hiding...deep breaths and high hopes...

deep breaths...

high hopes...

deep...

and here I stand...the world before me like it's never been...the deepest fear I've ever known was slain in the black of the cave...and it's raining out my window...and still I can barely breath or whisper a prayer...because here my heart is so full of so much that I have no words to say...and little tears make trails down my cheeks and the songs in my ears speak of life after the fall and the beauty we find and the fears that destroy us and the lives that pass by us...and how we'll never forget, though it can't be forever...but these are the things that make up life...and through it all I carry more...the thoughts of my father...the impossible turning and the way things are...what to do with the aftermath of the moments we had together...I find my heart faltering...my resolve cracking day by day...exposing the depths of what really rests there...and it's not as ugly as I imagined and facing the things I feared most have brought the most freedom...and all of this swims in my head as I try to find my feet...but I can't see below the haze of all that's within me...sooner or later the air will let out and I'll be on firm ground...but for now I'm in between the firmament...floating and falling with equal abandon...

First kiss

We'd not met before...the sun had vanished and the sound of baseball echoed in our ears over the booming voices of the obnoxiously drunk.  I didn't know you, you'd never said my name...but your voice was the same one I'd heard only days before...A long drive...the weary road of an eminent goodbye...you were exhausted from the sorrow...the frustration...the years of silence that finally ended only to give way to a final farewell...I shed tears for you before you'd even stood before me...your scent had not yet filled my lungs...if I had known then I may have said no...and your laugh...guttural and loud...all genuine and joyous...but that was just the first night...

Days passed quickly...the biggest hello I'd ever said and then you were there...so sweetly in the morning checking in...How are you?  such simple words...but they moved me...your laugh, your smell...they kept me there...wondering...forgetting...you said you'd sew your lips shut...I said it wouldn't work...you couldn't say enough...and I would not impose my voice...and still...I wanted to see you...you seemed to want the same...The date was set.

A Friday night A beach and a bar...conversation and cold beer and hours of words...mostly yours...I desperately wanted to want this...but my heart held back...when we'd had enough we walked out side to the edge of the world...the sea outstretched before us...the air close and damp...warm...wonderful...we found a spot, the sun fell asleep hours before...the fog still hidden away and lightening in the distance...and you and I were there...side by side, the waves crashing...the world turning the way it does...so subtle that we'd never know...but I swear I felt it moving...hours of words and words and words...the warmth left the world and you drew me in...my back to you...your arms blankets around me...the most comfortable chair I'd ever found refuge in...Your breath on my neck...your voice in my ears...the scent of your skin...all of it drawing me closer...I felt safe for the first time...nothing to fear...alone with a man on a beach in the middle of the night...what would my mother say...and still...I knew it was okay...you would not steal from me or take what wasn't yours....you pulled me to my feet, wrapped me in your arms...held me tighter...the sea at your back...outstretched before me...the infinite vastness of it all and here I was with you...the only two people alive for all I knew...It felt like we were dancing...the breaking waves a symphony...you held me back...your eyes on mine and mine searching yours...I knew that look...I'd seen it before...I turned him down and broke his heart so many years before...but you...here...now...all of this...and the scent of your skin...still drawing me in...

drawing me in...

Your lips met mine...this first time, unafraid...completely unsure...but there we were...the sea abounding just beyond our feet...a curtain of fog illuminated with pin pricks of hazy light and a veiled moon...flashes of lightening...uneven breathing...hands pulling closer...unafraid...unreserved...never before...perfection...the sea...the sand...the fire...the fog...who knows how long...and so worth the wait...and all these day later your scent still lingers...making me remember...I could never forget...