intigration

I feel it in my fingers...I feel it in my toes...and those are the opening words of a song I think we all know...but so fitting their words for where I am now...fully feeling everything...in every inch of me...Happiness, so transitory and fleeting...so risky to depend upon...the moment you give it a name and  make it yours it disappears...that's the way it has always seemed to operate...perhaps it's different this time...perhaps it's deeper this time...perhaps it has written itself on my heart and moved from mere 'happy' to joy...to lasting and complete...to the wait is over and now you may keep it...I fear holding it too tightly...possibly creating a stinging beast of it...but it seems now to be holding me...wrapping itself around my heart and giving me a name and a place to rest my head...There is still a risk...there is still a possibility of an end point...and for a while dread of it drove me...but some risks are worth taking...so headlong I walk into it...holding my breath...holding his hand...fearful but unafraid...illuminated with hope and the joy of discovery...every day far surpassing the last...and happiness wedging itself deeper into my heart...

Jungle

My heart is over flowing...a fountain of joy and wonder mingled together gushing forth with new eyes and a beautiful new take on the world at hand...always hoping, never expecting or imagining this...so grand in its structure...the glory of love and life and everything one heart could ever desire combined with a second like minded heart...wonder does not fully express it...nor bliss or rapture or sheer joy...no description exists that will serve to capture what is beating within me...elation...that has been the word of late...and even that in its well rounded beauty does little justice to the depth I crave to express...the world should know this...wars would cease and wrongs be righted and all the woes that man brings to man would disappear in its wake...I thought I understood love before now...I imagined I had some sort of grasp on what it meant...it was all rational and supposed...but never this...never this abyss of beauty growing like orchids in a desolate place...

and here I stand...no longer an 'I' but a 'we'...so unfamiliar that word...the journey ahead, so uncharted but so desired...no longer two legs but four, walking forward, one day and one step at a time...a beautiful place to be...walking through this jungle of life to whatever beautiful end...and "happy" means something completely new...

All That Glitters

It is an amazing thing to have ones perspective shifted so drastically...The view from where I stand is so different now than it was...I was happy before, in almost every area of my life, save one...and the happiness that has been added in these last few months, but especially these last few weeks, is beyond anything I ever imagined could be possible...My heart was already so full, and then this unexpected blinding burst of sunlight broke through and my heart was inundated with so much more than I conceived to be bearable for one heart...I have for years walked a path I thought was made of burning coals and scorching embers...but now I see it for what it was...the heat and the pressure and the fear that it would never work out transformed that path from the black and miserably dreary much loathed road to one sparkling and glittering like a thousand multifaceted stars...diamonds now pave it...priceless jewels that seemed mere stone before their true worth was revealed...and I cherish every step...as ugly and lonely and sad as they were...there were also times of joy unrecognized and promises made that this day would come, if only I would wait...haha...what choice did I have but to wait...after a certain length of time waiting is all that's left...and all the while my heart and his were being readied for the day our coal encrusted paths would meet...and that explosion of fire and light and truth and hope and love transformed the roads we walked...and now...the dark days behind us...life ahead...more life, better life...everything glittering and radiant...There is no where else I'd rather be...no other road I'd have wished to walk...and in the midst of waiting I hated the mantra "almost but not yet"...now I am so grateful for those days...and the words have changed to "this is why you waited"...and a heart this full cannot deny the beauty of such a thing...and it's no longer only mine...

2 Steps and a Free Fall

I have been walking this path for a very long time...it has been straight and narrow u\and until very recently quite alone...others have come and kept pace for a while, speaking words of forever and  filling me with hope that perhaps they would stay and continue on...only to unexpectedly an often without explanation veer away a leaving me limping for a while...and I fought the bitter weeds that attempted to entrench themselves in my heart...and I kept walking to shake them off...hoping and praying and aching all the way...and the path wound far from home and found me here...and immediately the path I walked was full...I was not alone...I had options...and options are not my favorite thing...especially when those options are attached to hearts that beat and break so easily...but each one came with something to offer and something to take...a first kiss...a raised bar...a kindred spirit...

First kiss...
so short the time we had together...and for the better...kissing you made me see what love is not meant to be...it is not hungry just to fill and does not look to steal and kill...willing as I was to be led to slaughter...thank God my heart screams louder and longs for more than filling voids with empty words and lusty pretenses...fire waited at the end of our road if it went any further...your disappearing act was the best thing I've ever seen, and I clutch my heart, thankful for a narrow escape... 

Raised Bar...
You were there early on, your gentle laugh and easy heart...so full of sweet and quite thoughts...though deeper down perhaps there's more storm than I've  yet seen...I thought it was you...I thought perhaps there would be no other ever to follow...and I was happy and so it seems were you...and the thought of hurting you kills me, but I know that it would hurt more if I were not true...so here now, walking with you, the horizon not so far away I have to smile and bid you adieu...no one is more surprised than I...and all the reasons why narrow down to one brilliant burst of sunlight that can't be hidden or talked away with the logic best employed in problem solving and decision making...for all of your pros...that list is infinite...the one con that stands against you is that you are not him...

And raised bar and first kiss never would have crossed my path if I had simply walked rather than doing something to" help" the process along...and it would have been easier to walk on without these two, but even in that I know they were for a reason...stepping stones to help me see...even knowing had I never met them, I still would have met him...

Kindred spirit...
And here's where it gets good...you were immediate...there from the start and instantly someone I knew I would love...though friendship was what I had in mind...but we talked...

and talked...

                      And Talked...
                                                   and talked...
                                                                                                and talked...
and we're talking still and your thoughts and your heart echo mine exactly...and everything I thought was just me is also so deep in you...the crazy, the fears, the hopes the tiny hidden moments that no one else sees or delights in...you see them you love them as I do...Talking to you I'm talking to the better part of my heart and I know that all of my hoping and striving and imagining, I never would have come up with you...because I could never imagine that you actually existed...and walls and ruins no longer exist...just a vast field with poetic trees and carpets of clover and wild flowers...and I knew without saying that my heart was yours and yours was mine...and tough it may not be what others see as wise, they will in time realize that there is and never could be anyone else...and all of the waiting and longing and hoping and crying and fighting and begging God and quitting, and starting up again and making it my job since he wasn't doing his, and all the while he was was doing more than I would any longer let myself believe...a single day sooner would have been the wrong timing entirely...but this...

And here's how it happened...we have spent our entire lives walking through the same dark haunted forest, though too far apart to know the other walked there beside us...we journeyed and toiled over sharp rocks and raging rivers...thickets of thorns, wild and ferocious beasts that thirsted for our blood...and years and years of stumbling along...striving to be happy and normal and what others saw as acceptable...but still, each of us carrying the burden of ALONE...vastly and infinitely so...with no real prospect of an end in sight...and then before our eyes...you where you walked and the path I now could barely stand on...a bright spot appeared...and I climbed to my feet and in the same breath we continued forward, unaware of one another...running now toward the light...hoping this end in sight was not some trick of the eye...you on your path and I...one last push, a branch slapped my face and then I was free...the imposing forest at my back...and I looked out around me...the path beneath my feet had disappeared as if I'd reached the end of he world...and out stretched before me was a wide field, golden and green...covered in flowers, the sun filtering through the clouds like spotlights...glittering the earth it touched...and not so far away to the left of me was a figure...and it moved toward me and I walked toward it...hoping it wasn't a trick, but so tired of the ALONE that I would risk my life to find out...and then without a word my hand was in yours and yours was in mine...your fingers dancing between mine...and we stood no longer alone, our backs to the forest... here in our open field of possibility...no longer alone...but free to build up whatever we desire...

And that's where I stand...no longer alone...though achingly apart...and there's no where else for me now...because there's no where else I'd rather be...and for the first time in my life I'm not wondering if I will always be alone...if there will ever really be someone out there who could handle me. haha...I always wanted to walk into a room and know...it wasn't exactly that, but almost...I know...

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...

limbo

Still fighting to catch my breath...days have passed and all I can be sure of is that I'm still unsure...I find my heart faltering...how can I know for certain after so many years of silence...I want to say I know.  I want to say I'm resolved to believe his every word...but my heart holds me back...as it always has for every man who has walked in and out of my life...believing is impossible with a history like mine...but there is nothing I want more than to trust...to cling to that resolve, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that this time it'll be different...this time I can believe...all of my hopes will not come back empty...

Time is what I need...time to rewrite the imprints of  past...to destroy the patterns written on my heart and rebuilt a fortress that fully feels...I can't touch it now...I can't quite take it in...but I want to...I need to...This is where it stands...my heart heaving within me...desperate to believe...terrified of being broken...maybe it's a step backwards...but maybe it's a step forward in disguise...

Still Unspoken

That was it...27 years and only three days...

seventy two hours...

Four thousand three hundred twenty minutes...


Two hundred fifty nine thousand two hundred seconds...

Otherwise known as not nearly enough time and he's on his jet plane home...

The sound of his laugh...the wide crooked break of his smile...teeth white and white and gleaming...wrinkles attesting to a lifetime of laughter and tears and self loathing and self realization...

His forehead higher...hairs shorter...whiskers all but gone...

The hands in pockets stance...unable to sit because lack of movement makes him crazy...

Such a short span of time to efficiently memorize all the things I should have always known...

They are mine now...two hundred sixty thousand moments added to my heart...

And the hardest goodbye I've ever said...

AND STILL I DIDN'T SAY IT ALL...I didn't say enough...I cannot find the voice fore everything beating in my chest when the moment is before me...

My mind goes blank, though my heart aches...so full of so much...

And this day of all days?  Silence is my enemy...

The Uncertainty of Falling

Grams and I wait on the deck...sun shining, hearts frantically beating as we each bear the anticipation in our own way...she chatting nervously, stomach in knots...me reading...petting Griffin the toy poodle...my back in knots...A blue Camery drives by...Grams is out of her chair. 

"Oh!  It's him!  He looks just like Jerry!"
(Her brother)

She called out to him as he drove by  "JERRY!!"
(His name is Tom)

Her stomach in knots, my back getting tighter...we move to the front door. 

The car passes by in the opposite direction, a blue streak bearing the most significant meeting of my life, and I suspect theirs as well...A man steps out, navy blue shirt, blue jeans, gray hair...the beard I know from the photos gone...I don't look at him at first...I don't know what's in my heart...all I can feel are the knots in my back...tightening and twisting...all I can think is "is this real or am I dreaming?"

He walks the path to the door, three pots in his hand...yellow daisies for me, red roses for grams and pink daisies for Aunt Cheryl...the knot tightens...I stand back as grams rushes her son...her excitement shooting out her finger tips and toes...the electricity of seeing an impossible dream come to life...I love the moment...the knot tightens...it's my turn next...

He looks at me...I hold back my heart as I move forward to hug him...is he real?  Is this happening?

I step back and look...I cannot speak...grams fortunately has the words I can't seem to find...I search his face for traces of me...traces of my brothers...traces of the face from the photos I carry in my heart...There is a faint similarity...but not enough to convince me...we move to the patio and sit down...the knot tightens...I smile and watch...the words still missing...grams says enough to carry my silence...he shares about his life...I listen...I watch...I wait...the knot tightens...

For a while he's not real...just a man I'm meeting for the first time...the significance of it completely lost...I cannot feel it...I cannot process past the knot in my back...I cannot fully feel the way my heart beats, the subtle shaking in my hands and legs...Griffin is in my lap...I focus my shaking hands on his back and legs and fluffy fur...maybe it won't be noticeable...

I watch his face as he speaks...the way the muscles in his lips curl and move...the subtle lifting of his eyes...the way they look back at me...I try to memorize the lines...I search for my brothers...I search for myself...He looks from grams to me...throughout the night I know he watches...I watch too...Moments I appear not to look I know his eyes are on me...I wonder what he sees...He says I look like my mom...I say I get that a lot...

His smile is real...it slowly sinks in that he is too...

Aunt Cheryl gets home, dinner is consumed...the stories begin...I sit...I watch...I listen...A history I've never heard...his and hers...the knot tightens...my heart flutters upward...slowly climbing like the moon rising outside the window...

His laugh is real...he is too...

I see it in his eyes...every second they spend on me...He wonders what I'm thinking...he regrets the lost years...the choices made...he rejoices that he's here...so do I...

So few days...so many years...the knot tightens...I already miss him...

Morning is close...a few hours of much needed sleep and then the day will be ours...his and mine...today was uncertain...tomorrow will be hard but beautiful...The knot loosens...my heart tightens...this is real...he is real...

Of Brick Walls and Black Holes

Tomorrow...

Sometimes change happens so subtly that one doesn't see it happening until it is full blown...and other times it hits you right between the eyes...a force to be reckoned with...turning everything inside you into an unrecognizable tangle of emotions, be it for better or worse....that's where I am...the brink of something so big, so overwhelmingly  massive that I cannot for the life of me actually take it all in...I feel as if I've hit a brick wall...I cannot process any further than I have...I'm looking at the future before me...one I never in all of my years ACTUALLY expected to see come about...and all I can do is stand still, scratching my head...wondering what the next step could possibly be...I cannot move another inch until tomorrow has come and gone and the shape of it starts to make sense out of the swirling mists of the unknown...Tomorrow is...

the abyss...

27 years is an awfully long stretch of time to go with so many unknowns...the past is impossible to make up for...all we can do is share stories and tap out the indecipherable codes that make up the lot of those years...the complete picture will never been seen again...but at least we will have the future...I cannot wait...I cannot even fathom the depths of what is running through me right now...How can one put to words 27 years of feelings?  How can one pinpoint a single thought or emotion when every single one is backed by so many years of them...

I knew early on that all of this was for something...there was a reason he had gone...there was a need to work through it, to find a way to let go...I knew I had to get past it...and one day I did...it was not alone...it was not easy...it was not fast...it took most of my life and sometimes more energy than I can even fathom having...but then, tomorrow is on the horizon...all of those years of hate and hurt and sadness and bitterness and longing and hoping and dreaming and fighting and forgiving and fearing and loving...and here I am on the edge of my brick wall...staring into the abyss and unable to think or imagine my way past it...I can only look into it...waiting...

WAITING...

WAITING...

One more sleep...then he'll be at my door...my dad...a stranger...but somehow not...27 years and all I can think is what if he doesn't want me? 

I think maybe my whole life has been wrapped around that one question...I can't help but feel like a little girl.  The second it was spoken "Your dad wants to meet you."  I was instantly 5 years old...asking a different form of that same question...back then it was "why" not "what"...I think that little girl needs to hear the answer...I think she always has...I think once she does, once I know I can finally...dear GOD please...finally step forward! 

When standing on a wall, facing an abyss and unable to find a way past it or around it...sometimes all one can do is

JUMP...

This is me rocking back on my heels, finding the spring between my ankles knees and thighs, and propelling myself forward, arms flailing, heart beating, palms sweating, brain spinning...hopes SOARING  into the center of that dark and formless void...I'll let you know how it works out....

Photograph

   My memory is the most recent photograph I have of you.  I take it out from time to time and examine first, the yellowing edges, they seem darker than before.  Then I move to you, the top of your head, thick brown hair, down to your forehead, brown bushy eyelashes, clear blue eyes behind thick lashes, a nose shaped like mine.  Your upper lip covered by a mustache, mostly brown but touched with flecks of gold.  Your lips are red like mine and oh! How I've hated these lips!  Your beard, bushy and long.  I'd never recognize you without it, it's all I've ever known.  There's something in those eyes.  A secret I could never decipher, a code I could never break.  Wanting more, but knowing the price I'd have to pay to get it, I put the photograph away. 

    It is night.  I lay awake asking unanswerable questions.  What did I do wrong?  Do you have another daughter somewhere since me who you love more?  Will this empty sorrow always be so deep inside me every time I hear the word "daddy"?

    I am five years old and you come for a visit.  We go fishing, you buy me Barbie's little sister Skipper, you make promises you can't yet keep.  I light the photograph on fire, but quickly blow out the flame.  I'm not ready to let you go.  I've almost burned it up so many times, but always stop short.  "Someday."  I whisper and put the photograph away.  The mystery of your eyes still haunting me.  The red of your lips confronting me every day as I stare into the mirror, still unsatisfied with the unanswered questions.

     For years I look for more.  I ask my mother about you.  She gives me the last letter you ever wrote and says softly, "He loved you very much.  There was something different in his eyes the day you were born, a sparkle not there before."  I hold in my tears until I am alone.  The tears come like a flood as I read the letter.  All I see are lies and bad excuses to walk away.  I read it over and over and soon put it away with the photograph.  For the first time I know you won't come back, and I hate you for it.  Yet I can't burn the photograph.

    Every time I make a friend they ask about you.  I tell them the short story.  'He left when I was small and never came back'.  They say "Sorry".  I say "I'm fine, I'm better off without him".  I try to believe it, but I know that I'm as much of a liar as I believe you to be.  I begin to see myself in the photograph.  Every Sunday and Wednesday I go to church.  My youth pastor sees my wounds.  "You have to forgive".  They've told me that my whole life.  I say the words to appease them.  "Jesus, I forgive him."  But really, I hate you more because I don't mean it.  I start saying it every day.  They say it will help.  It becomes the only relationship we have.  

    One day I take the photograph out again.  "I want to be rid of you."  I whisper.  I light a match and look at your photo glossy eyes and their sparkling blue secrets.  Tears flood my eyes and I hate you because I can't stop loving you.  I write you a letter I won't ever send and put it away with your last letter and the photograph.  For a while I feel better. 

  Time passes by.

    I'm older now and live far away in Scotland.  Your last letter is lost from my memory, so I ask my mom for the real one.  Two weeks later it arrives in the mail.  I take it with me for a walk on the cliffs overlooking the North Sea.  The wind is blowing hard as it usually does so close to the ocean.  My bones freeze within me, but I almost feel numb to it.  Seven years have passed since I read that letter last.  I take a deep breath and start to read.  The words have not changed, but it is not the same letter.  You speak of your fears, of wounds so deep you drown in them.  You speak of failing, you speak of your father and how you hate and love him as I hate and love you.  The wind howls around me.  I close my eyes and forget the ground beneath my feet.  For a moment I stand only on your words.  I'm wearing your shoes.  I am the person in the photograph, and I understand why you left.  When I open my eyes I'm still on the cliff side in Scotland.  You are somewhere half a world away, but closer than you have ever been in my life before that moment.  I know now why I could not burn your photograph.  I smile with the satisfaction of someone who has solved a great mystery and put the photograph away.