Archive for October, 2006
Fingertips
on parched
lips
peeling
dead skin
like
plucking
petals…
I love you, I love you not…
Taste of
copper
on the
tip
of
my
tongue
awaiting
the
outcome
my
mouth
a
Daisy.
Words
cascade
like
shattered
pieces
of
glass
pointed,
jagged,
beautiful….
glittering
in
the
light.
Thought
upon
thought
slides
one
on
to
the
next
on
to
the next
raw-edged
fragile
slivers
leave
clean
cuts
that
glisten
in
the
light.
I am cleaning. Slowly, methodically I am setting things straight. Cleaning my head, my house…my life. I cleaned things up with you. I told you, in voice mail, but I told you what was always there, you know the truth now, the truth you may have suspected, may have hoped for, may have dreaded, but you know it now.
I am cleaning my house and one of my giant conch shells falls. It is my favorite, but you knew that. You were there when I found it. I am worried it is damaged, I pick it up, inspect it. It is fine.
I run my hands along it, inside it and my finger tips touch something. A piece of paper. A sticky note. I pull it out of the shell and immediately recognize your writing.
It has been years since you were here, years since I got the shell. Years since you left me this note, on a small square yellow sticky note. Your thoughts, your feelings. Insecurity and doubt. You tell me your truth.
Did you wonder if I knew? Did you think I had read it and never said a word? Is that what happened?
Years later, we both know the truth. We both know the truth of us. Who knew a sticky note would become one of the most valuable things I will own?
Sometimes, the sadness opens up in me unexpectedly and it washes over me so completely that it is as though there has never been anything but this, this sadness.
When it happens, I long for things, I let the want and the need in and I lament everything that is not mine, perhaps will never be mine. I feel the sadness, utterly and completely. It is a pain so exquisite that it breaks me in two.
And then I laugh. I laugh from the same place the sadness comes from, from the deepest part of me. I laugh because sometimes that is all one can do. One either laughs or they cry and if they are lucky, they do both at the same time.
I laugh because I feel the sadness, the exquisite ache and I know I am alive. I know I am connected with this life and there is joy in that for me.
