What was once the most natural of places for me now seems foreign. I wake in the middle of the night, certain you are up too. I reach for you, just to know you are there safe beside me. What I find is emptiness.
It an unsettled feeling for this heart. What seems so natural in my repose turns to discomfort in my waking. You should be there. I should be there. We should be there.
Alas, there is only the emptiness.
I close my eyes again, wishing myself back to that place where I can see you in the faint evening light. Waking is so much easier when you are there, my senses aroused and my heart feeling the lack of space between us. In your absence I try to will myself back to sleep. If I could only dream away the moments until you are there again and I could feel you. If only time was at my mercy, speeding up and slowing down at my will. Instead it plays games with me, crawling along when I beg it forward and speeding away when I need it to trickle by.
You are, of course, embedded in my soul. I feel you there tonight as I always do., and there is some comfort in that wonderful connection. I place my hand on my heart and inhale deeply, trying to remember your smell. Memories of you moving in the morning filter through my mind. Visions of our morning embrace, your smile as your voice echoes in my chest, play out on a darkened screen. A tear creeps out and finds its way down the side of my head, finding its way toward my pillow. If tears were but seeds I would have planted a forest by now, as happy as they are.
Those tears are not of sorrow, my love. They are of joy. You have arrived, you are in my Being, and I am grateful for the way you love me. As foreign as that sounds to my mind, you love me. Even more foreign to my heart is that I am completely ready to receive.
I see it now. A once crazy dream now realized in your kiss. A prayer once uttered in disbelief is now answered in your voice. Everything I have ever lived through, everything I’ve ever stumbled upon, has led me to you. It’s as if some great dust storm raged and I had fallen. I fought to stand so many times. When I finally had risen, and the dust settled, you were there. Suddenly the wind-whipped wounds were irrelevant. In an instant, the mud caked on my skin washed away. It all made perfect sense in that moment when the bell rang, the doors opened, and you rushed into my arms for the very first time.
You asked me at that moment if I was nervous. I was, my life was flashing before my eyes. I could see the purpose of my survival and now that purpose could see me. I could see the challenges to come, and I could feel the power of everything that was in the moment your arms wrapped around me.
Some may call it a hug. I call it home.
They say that home is where the heart is. Well, love, I left my heart right next to yours wherever that may be. That is what makes these empty spaces I once valued seem so empty. They are no longer my home. They are just places I needed once to survive until the storm settled and my home appeared. I honor them for their place in my life, but now they simply ask me to leave them be. They beg me to go home, and they always point me to you.
Whether we are on a beach, or in some tropical clime, or on a mountain trail watching nature go about its destiny, I will be home. When my hand reaches out and finds yours, I will be home. When I suddenly feel your touch without warning or hear your words from the other room, I will be home. When I am guarding your space from the other side of a wall, or down the street, or even in the next town I will be home. When you call for me and I can answer, I will be home. When I can raise a glass that you have filled and honor it with a prayer, I will know home while always remembering the forest that was planted in your absence.
What a gift I have been blessed with.