“Yes, this life is mine, but more often I watch it take place and my hands feel too far away to touch it.”

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.

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 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.

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.

I’m remembering again, how loneliness has always made me brave.

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.

The world will be loud again. I’ll notice the loneliness less.

For now, I’ll bring what I can to my own four walls. I recognize the purpose, the promise of this: a church is made by its space, by its practices.