“People have been washed away by less. I’ll take every step gently. So often, you can’t tell the rush of a riptide until you’re already at sea.”

I never lose pieces of me, I just gain new understanding.

I’d get lost in this green, ferns leaning against the trees, soil stuck to my feet, never dream of finding my way back again.

There will be a time where this hurts less and it will not mean it didn’t matter. It means that in the face of feeling something precious slip in my hands, I will always find a way back to myself.

Some mornings, I like to live like a secret; wake as quietly as I can, slip out of bed without so much as a wrinkle.

How radiant you are, waiting by the window, watching for the sun to grant you more time to dance beneath it. You’ve let yourself dream again. Even if its in bites, even if it’s in a different voice than it used to be.

I descend into an unopened sky, the ocean floor, the final embrace of a graveyard. Find your fill of me before my blue pales like a sour moon.

In a dream, my fingertips pulse. I’ll be patient in my blooming. In a dream, I let time pass through open hands.

I still know the fabric of where I begin and end.

I allow myself to be a weathervane; receive every feeling that greets the shore of me.

I’m writing about moving again, and when I write about moving, I really mean beginning. I’m beginning again.

Take me back to the evergreen trees; to the sunlight through the leaves, the bending ferns and fronds. The pitter of the rain, the smooth rocks sleeping under moss. Take me back to the life I know before this body.

I want to wade into the water on the sidewalk, crawl out of this feeling without giving it a name. Take a lighter to love’s sticky edges so its sadness isn’t caught in my throat.

We’ve never seen what a happy life could look like if we chose to spend it by ourselves – sharing our beautiful lives with friends, family members, the occasional crush, and lounging out in that quiet space alone as if an idyllic sunned beach.

Hold me here, where I feel less like a stranger to my own laughter. Where it’s easier to believe things happen for a reason or maybe, at least, out of a thousand winding roads my life might take, I will still find one that fits me.

In a dream, I’m holding you close and when I wake, I do. How lucky, to want and have.

I sit on the bare floor, leave my palms unturned, and watch relief pool into one hand, and uncertainty in the next. I will try not to lean more one way or another, but let them hold each other as company.