she's waiting for him.

My gaze was dull this morning; wrapped in the quilt I kept tucked in the back seat of my car, sitting on a boulder at my favorite spot by the lake. There was a silence in me that reached far past my sleepy lidded eyes, and deep into my heart.

I took a sip; the tendrils of mist clouding my thoughts slowly carrying me away into another world, which I've yet to decide upon the certainty of its existence. I am drinking tea in a coffee cup, gossamer and brick in layers, like irises with no pupil; the liquid heats my fingers the bone, and sears the sheets of skin, but soothes my hurried blood. 

In my mind I heard the nervous fumbling of the sound of rubber soles grinding against uneven pavement – shuffling feet and the shallow breaths of cold air that pierced my lungs. I saw the pouring rain. My hair dripping water like icy fingers running down the small of my back and the bumps on my skin raised with the chill. The webs of fog would blanket the sky, and the darkness of the enchanted night would cause my chest to ache with its exhilarated pounding.

I would find a place – a bench perhaps – and sit.

“Can I offer you my umbrella?” might be the first words I would hear him say.

A small smile would lift the edges of my mouth, and with my eyes still blissfully closed I would say, “no thank you. I like the rain.” I would then look up to greet kind eyes, and my breath would be stolen from my lungs, and my heart would skip merrily down the road.

Perhaps that would be how I would meet him. Doing what I love the most – lost in my mind, and found in the night.

Maybe we would take a canoe, fill it with pillows and blankets, and float on this very lake in each other’s arms. The willows on the shore would hang low and sob salty tears into the water. With quiet giggles and whispered secrets, we would cut gracefully through the water, and he would listen to my catastrophes because he wanted to. And in the warm summer night, fall in love too far from solid ground for even the lighthouse to touch us. We would call it: skipping away, because unlike me he would be afraid of running away.

He would think I was beautiful. Not beautiful the way of proportion, or scientifically speaking, or the worldly expectations of It. He would see my lakewater eyes speckled with flecks from the ink of my pen, dancing in poetry, in loss and love. He would see a lost child, a determined adult, and a wise old woman and love me for my uncertainty.

 That night he would trickle his liquid sunshine through my mapped out veins like a bullet through smoke, and later people would ask while shielding their eyes, what had changed. We would talk of the mysteries of the universe until the stars faded into the soft pink light of the dawn. 

I sigh. And pray to God that my story will consist of more than simply a curt hello in a crowded work space, or a single’s ward soirée.

~C

if you can find me.

From half a notebook where thoughts formed into the shape of clouds, I write and piece together the shades from my eyes onto a page; my mind turning on a spit over an open flame, producing steam as a whistling kettle. I get sideways glances and curious looks from passersby’s whose interests have been mildly piqued, but not enough to ask why I am writing from the top branch of a very public tree.  Perhaps I simply appear to have it all together, and indeed would never fall off of the branch because of the official looking crease between my eyebrows, and the intensity of my challenging gaze.

The sky is a solid blue today, but I find myself missing the textures of the billowing firmament  blooming over the mountains – ever changing – and the wind’s whisper in the air, shifting between budding branches.

Winter is beginning to release its bony fingers from the tender flesh of spring as it is lying down to set into a plump slumber.

I am writing without a well-defined purpose now, simply absorbing the pleasure resulting from drawing a black ink pen across a blue lined page, simply to splatter my emotions onto an empty canvas. I am writing letters to the dead willow’s ashes, the bones of the ocean and the island’s craggy skin. I am writing to you, in everything around me.

I cried the night I realized that I was in love.

I fell in love as we watched the sunset – with the light disappearing from the sky, slipping between the fractures in the mountain; the dusk rushing in as the last tinge of reddish orange evaporated into a fine mist hovering forever around our spinning bodies; as we paused for a fraction of a moment to stand in the fading light as the feathers of warmth brushed past our skin, tearing our eyes away from the submersion of the world for us to gasp for air before we drowned.

I fell in love even knowing that between the meeting of our fingertips – I would never have you; as surely as the Earth tilts and spins, the fire in your eyes would melt away as easily and as quickly as the dimming light.

So I dropped your hand, and looked into your face as I watched the colors fade away into a blank empty stare, and almost felt relieved because solitude is so much easier to bear as I wait for my only. He is the cold lone star that burns up every quiet layer of my paper night.

I cried when I found myself one night, standing on the slick pavement with the dim light of a city streetlight washing over me; when I found myself on the stained porch steps of a vacant flower shop eleven bus stops from home; when the skies opened in the blackness and the rain ran icy rivulets into my eyes and down my face, when my sneakers were drenched, I just stood there and wondered whether his eyes were blue or brown.  

~C

when you can't sleep at night.

I don’t think I have felt anything as simultaneous lovely and acrid as the anguish that planted itself in my stomach the evening my parents sat us all down and told us that a member of the family was dying. The anguish grew and grew and ripened and blossomed into sorrow, that through their words “lets just keep this between us” became a silent, inwardly growing pain. I secretly envied the girl in my class whose father had passed away in the night, with no warning at all. Because the building up until the day when that person was no longer in my life – the sheer waiting – left no room for me to seek closure from something that hadn’t even happened yet.

It had felt as if the carpet beneath my feet had been ripped out from below me, and I was caught in the state of panic right before you hit the ground. Most days I didn’t know whether it was a Monday or a Saturday, and on my bad days I didn’t know what month it was. I just looked out the window and wondered how the snow managed to sit on the trees so confidently in the middle of August and pressed my fingertips against the glass, leaving greasy smudges.

I remember that when I walked through the halls of the school, the feeling of being suffocated by them, I remember folding my arms across my chest so tightly to keep my insides from spilling out all over the classroom floors that I would leave eyebrow raising bruises, and how food would make me gag because I couldn’t get it past the giant lump in my throat.

 One day the school counselor pulled me into her office, she had a small sandplay box on her desk and candy in a bowl. She told an uncomfortable thirteen year old that she had been informed by nosy concerned friends that I had been showing alarming signs of depression. Fuming inside over the feelings of betrayal, I laughed and convinced her that it was all a misunderstanding. When she finally let me go I walked straight out of the front door of the school and into the rain.

That was the day I skipped class for the first time.

I remember feeling as if a tidal wave had washed in, destroying my way of life, and creating nothing but a desolate wasteland.

The cement sidewalk was a not a stranger to my feet, but it was one of those days when it rains more under the sycamore than around it.

 I remember seeming to slip in an out of consciousness as I walked with no particular destination in mind. Thinking that all I really wanted was to bathe in a summer sunset in this warm rain with a fox, or a soggy book, as any memory of my past is drawn out of my soul like poison from a wound.

I dropped down onto a bench, waiting for a bus to take me anywhere but where I was when I felt someone sit next to me. I didn’t want to open my eyes, so I pretended I hadn’t heard him, when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

He was thin, but tall, with a face worn by the sun and bright eyes that crinkled like wax paper when he smiled. He asked about my long face and despite his age, limberly matched my crossed legs. I liked him right away, as he neither talked to me as my better, or as if he perceived me to be a child. I lied and told him that I was suffering through the loss of a loved one, because in my heart she was already dead.

He nodded; the back of his eyes filled with the joy and the heartache of a well lived life, and for the first time in a long time I felt that if anyone could actually understand what I was feeling, it was this man.

He told me that through the hurt the world will keep turning, that the tears will eventually evaporate from my cheeks, the burden of nothingness on my lungs will be whisked away like a pile of fine powder in a spring breeze, and that I would find it easier to breathe again. He told me about how the seasons end, and the snow disappears, and how the clouds are blown away after a rainstorm. 

I had heard all of this before, from after school TV shows, and overly zealous strangers. But what they didn’t like to talk about is how the snow is always there. The clouds are always there. That whenever the principle of the conservation of matter is brought up, their tight polished smiles would twitch and they would stop talking and begin to glare with their shiny dark eyes because I wasn’t willing to accept the hands reached out in fictitious sympathy. The truth was that they don’t like to think about how the water molecules still weigh heavy somewhere in the world, and how gravity will never let anything go.

 But this little wrinkled man didn’t tell me that I will forget because human memory is so fleeting and pitiful, he didn’t tell me that the grief would ever go away – but that like the seasons, it would eventually change. He said that one day my anguish will grow into a love, an understanding, and that when hearts break; they have the chance to grow back stronger than they ever were.

I sit now in my room, waiting for it to be time to go to work, and I remember what he said to me only because it applies to my life now. I am not suffering through the death of a loved one, but the heartbreak of friends that have been swept up by a train that leads out of this town, and onto a better life that does not consist of me.

I try to listen, and to stay close and reach out to the howling wind floating from those who had once held my heart, screaming and moaning their way into my bones. But now it is March, the year is fading faster than the winter leaves, and the sky is as clear as it will ever be – grey and bleary, grey and as infinite as life–

I will never forget. But one day this ache will become a love – an understanding. And life will move forward, not because it has to, but because I want it to.

~C

silence.

 Winter swept through paths of asphalt and over rooftops, people, wood – sleeping only though a drug-induced rest; dreamless, empty, and merciful – ending the quivering pinpricks in fingers and toes, becoming nothing but blissfully unattached. It hasn't always been like this; no, not at all.

 I was swallowed up in the bitter embrace of the season – caught in the lazy passing of time – oftentimes with nothing but the delightful pause between the inhale and exhale of a wintery breath to occupy my thoughts. Nights filled with memories of snow glittering in the lamplight, and naked trees that looked so frozen against the glow of the night.

 Our whispers caught in the wind; and as I watched them being swept away, I imagined old spirits who would riffle through them, plucking out our hopes and dreams, to deliver them to a God who believed in us.

Remembering, remembering, a memory.

A warm blanket over heads, a fence that I loved, the absolutely aspen trees, pink blushes in the darkness, a world of water and awe, candy that is really plastic and false advertising, and a gluttonous fish.

I watched my fingernails grow – and once they were long enough, scratched out the eyes of those memories and politely asked them to go and hang their blind selves.

There is nothing left for me here in this town. It is time for me to move forward. This time, there is no running away, because there is nothing to run away from.

Nothing to run from but myself.

~C

no sense.

 Recently I have been dreaming dreams of my potential, and what God has in store for me in my future. Its unsure to me; which feels as though my body has been ingested and spat out – a half digested, unrecognizable mound of matter. I dislike the unknown, as I dislike the quickly changing weather. I now feel as though I must walk through life blindly, with arms flailing frantically in front of me.

 Life doesn't make much sense recently.

The perspiration on the glass
leaves solitary trails.
My eyes will chase each to the last,
while biting nervous nails.

 Into confusion I am hurled,
wind sings a lonesome hymn.
I'm drowning in this frozen world,
I don't know how to swim.

Time is small and fits in my palm,
all tin gears and lost rod.
It ticks inside me like a bomb,
the end an act of God.

At times the past comes back for me,
I try to fight alone,
Instead I give it bitter tea,
and ask it in my home.

~C

just give me 'till then to give up this fight.

Love is a softly spoken word, 

That whispers to your soul. 

But to my ears is left unheard --

I cannot feel at all. 

I spin you tales of loss -- regret,
in hopes to bring you near.
Your fondness then becomes a threat,
I hide my mind in fear.

You were not who I thought you were, 

Nor I who I pretend. 

This brief affair was all a blur, 

perhaps is best to end. 

When in the dark I lie alone,

and think what could have been, 

if that one word could reach the bone

beneath my hardened skin. 

To you my lonesome heart is bound,
this love you must now seek.
For in a noose is tightly wound,
and raw and cold my cheek.

~

Beautiful days and beautiful nights. New experiences, new faces, new life. I seek to be better, I seek to find joy, I seek opportunities to serve.

1 Thessalonians 5:18.

I am thankful for so many things, but mostly, GOD. Without him I would have nothing else to be thankful for.

I am thankful for every break in my heart, every scar, for every page I ever turned, for every door I opened and braved, for all the bridges that I built and burned with pyromaniac enthusiasm, for tears from laughing too hard, or tears from hurting too much, for family, for yesterday, for today. For what is, what was, and what will be. 

I am thankful for you. 

~C

the wind knows my name.

The first snowfall was even more satisfying to me than I imagined it would be. 

Having not slept all night, in the early hours of the morning I pushed aside the slats covering my large livingroom window, and sat on the carpet wrapped in a heavy quilt. I watched a thick blanket of clouds embrace the valley from mountain top to mountain top, before releasing its delicate cargo.

Oh, how I love the snow. 

One of the things that I find most pleasurable about winter are the nights. Where the sky turns a rich plum color, with glowing orange hues; where tendrils of mist caress the sliver of moon that peeks shyly between the hazy sky – running wispy fingers down its silver spine. The air almost seems to shiver in delight. 

There is no peace I've known that can quite compare to the absolute still of a windless, silent winter eve – where the gently falling snow that melts on eyelashes and dusts your body invokes the deepest of thoughts with its graceful decent. 

As I sit here now, I close my eyes; and in a wave of longing I conjure you from my mind and recollect a night that has yet to happen.

We sit huddled together, the space between our blushing noses is shallow. The only sounds are the bubbling laughter and whispered plots that drown in the silence. Sounds that even the trees have to lean in close to hear – who quickly become enraptured by the melodic tone of your voice as your words melt the night – and watch enchanted, as our swirling breath meets and embraces, dancing to your lullaby, drifting gracefully into the atmosphere. 

My lips are chapped with cold, and wet from my tongue that pushes through them in a rush of words – as secrets tumble from the swollen spaces of my mind – forming letters that freeze and fall into your lap. 

And you gather them up, and put them into your pocket for safe keeping. The hands on the clock turn with the shifting of the earth, so we lose ourselves in the stillness of the night.

It is not winter yet however. But anticipation of it all floods my veins with a fire I cannot quench. But I am patient. 

November (n.): the last month of autumn, but the beginning of a new adventure; time to take risks and do the unexpected. 

I have been striving to get to know myself better. It feels like being reintroduced to an old friend you'd forgotten you knew. I am realizing with each passing day that I am more and more powerful of a being – and yet more damaged with a pain that demands to be felt – than even I had previously imagined. I may even be quite out of my mind, as I am currently lost in mazes built by a bitter past; seeking an escape. 

I see the world in a way that the normal, mentally healthy individuals surrounding me can't – wont. They cant see it, or feel it, because their senses aren't engaged and raw. They wake up in the morning, go through their day mechanically, and they never open their eyes. 

They are blind. 

By closing your eyes to the ugly and painful, you similarly close your eyes to the beautiful and pleasurable – the complex magic in the universe that you cannot see unless you deliberately seek it out. Then, and only then, will you be able to transform your tormented old soul, into ecstatic beauty. It is always easier to be miserable; because to suffer is often less complex of an emotion comparatively to happiness. It is easy to be piteous, and frequently it is unavoidable. But to use that anguish and transform it into a passion and a ferocity that only exemplifies the magnificence of our world – is a rareness indeed. And though I may oftentimes be unstable, fragile, flighty, sensitive, fearful, insecure, and uncertain – these terrible, ugly things – I still am able to look upon the earth unblinking, and intensely understand. 

And it fills me with peace. 

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, 
But I have promises to keep, 
And miles to go before I sleep, 
And miles to go before I sleep. 

~C