Breaking

There it is again, the widening aperture of a life revealed in hazy hindsight. I’m at the forefront of something new, though what it is I don’t quite know yet. There are people and pages, expression and music, striving and love – but no faces and words, no fingers and guitar strings, no lips and ravenous souls fighting against the tsunami of consummation. My safe space is here in the abstract, but what I want is gravel and blood. A hand around a rainbow-striped waistband, a sulky midnight whisper, the shy thrumming of unkempt desire. Am I running from what I already have, or am I seeing something I didn’t see before? Is this what will save me?

I must have wanted to leave. I must have wanted to change. I must have wanted to let go and let in what I have now. I must have wanted a clarity that continues to elude me, the kind you always had. There was always your lighthouse and its beacon revealing me in the dark. I wanted to hold the light and find my way back to you and reclaim what was ours, but my ship had already strayed too far from shore. You wanted to guide me back, and I wanted to follow, to anchor myself in the love of your harbor, but the ghosts that haunted me beckoned me to go.

I’m trying to remember everything you taught me, contain everything you ever gave me, but I know that my attempts are trailed by the shifting shadow of memory. Every thought of you changes you, reshapes you, weathers the delicate chrysalis of our temporary crossing. You’re dancing in and out of view in the fulcrum of my mind’s eye, you a silhouette in a house of mirrors. I look at my calendar and see our imagined garden. I hear Claire de Lune and find myself in your living room. I walk my laps around the lake, every sign a sign of you, and remember warmth. Every morning I wake up, I’m reminded of what a dream is. The details are missing, but there again is the blanket of your acceptance. Transience is the joker of the universe, unwanted yet always in the cards we are dealt.

I didn’t know it would be so hard. I didn’t know it would hurt so much, the thundering of two hearts breaking and finding their way again in this world. I hope it hurt me more than all the ways I had hurt you, because I can live with hurting myself. I loved you as best as I could given what I knew and who I was. It wasn’t enough to save us, but every ounce of it was honest and real. You made more room in my heart than I thought was possible, and now I am planting seeds.

I hope you can forgive me while I work. I hope your anger and sorrow is accompanied by love and tenderness. I am in the process of weaving meaning through the cracks, of letting my heart speak and find voice, of making space for light and shadow to coexist. I wasn’t ever sure of what I wanted, but now I know. I am crystallizing every last fallen tear so that future me will never forget.