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.
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.
I’m thinking about how early the spring flower buds rise up from the grass; just barely on winter’s heels. How uncomfortable, how cold the soil must be, still half-frosted, when the roots start to take shape.
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.
My love lives in my cheeks – gives me away by the first smile. all the lines from years spent laughing, warm with extra freckles in the summer; a poker face that doesn’t keep once my knees fold.
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.
I will still live like a ghost in the mornings; walking, listening, pouring coffee to finish sometime by the afternoon, when I’ve had enough of watching the world and do all I can to live in it.
We’re in spring and I have learned how to be gentle and sharp; strong bark on budding trees. Hold out your hands. I’ll leave a pink kiss and a pocket knife.
