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...