again

Hitting her again.

Like a blindside, but with some warning, because it was a regular thing, an irregularly occurring thing. Sometimes like ice water tossed at her other times like fire shoved down her throat. It was just that extreme and just that shocking.

Born with it she thinks, this ability, but others just thought she was bruised, internally, like a neglected Macintosh left to shrivel in the sun.

What was it this time that brought it on? a look? a tone? a scribbled word on a sticky pad, stuck to the fridge?

Everything was a sticky pad, sticking to her like fly tape. And just as messy, only she couldn’t throw herself away, or perhaps she could, there were bridges, and pink pills and firearms in the state of Texas, and heck, even the swamp out her back door but then she would be no different than fly tape, and although they were cousins, they weren’t blood brothers.

It would pass anyway, it always did, and then she’d have nothing left but regret and embarrassment for ever telling him she could talk to trees.

because

But she doesn't love them to own them, to expect things from them, to keep them, to marry them, to sleep with them, live with them, become them, she loves them because of who they are without her. She loves them like a fly on the wall. She loves them as if they had never met her. She loves them knowing she may never see them again, never speak to them, hold them, kiss them, become their lover, best friend, confidante. She loves them in a manner much like the shore welcomes the tide, graciously, patiently, without question or reservation, respecting and admiring the cycles and timing of processes. She loves them authentically, deeply, in confidence. And she will likely love them even after they’ve chosen someone else because love is not a set of shoes to be filled in succession. She'll likely love them after they, or her, disappear and move on because love is not a location. And she'll likely be the one who is left loving them in the end, when all others have stopped, because love is water not stone. And she doesn't expect them to understand because love, like most things worthy, lies precariously between not-quite-logical and not-quite-absurd.

loss

Grief so yielding of action. From him I wish to take it away but it is impossible with me here and him there. I just have to have it then in all its weightiness. Just have to see it through and believe he may reap the benefit, through space and time. The loss too is my loss however obscurely, however inconceivably so. Sadness has been the tide, stopped and reversed, never coming in, and now I’m terrified at its return. The wall then, not so impermeable as I had once thought. Still affected so intensely by another’s bereavement. How to crawl out of my own heart and still live. I think of him then, and hope the anguish swift and the mourning, restful, when there can be no rest.