Category: Short Stories (Page 23 of 46)

I heard her say a thing, as if almost in a dream.

What is it you hear when you close  your eyes, my love?

I shut my eyes, desperately trying to answer her question. Through an avalanche of silky mist I searched, and in the hallowed caverns of a heart darkened by circumstance, and reborn through time, I find the answer.

I hear nothing.

I can sense her reaction through the space set between us, and I move lightly through the mystic channels of her pain. There are no drum beats to offer her, no raging fires by which I can warm her labored heart.

The rants begin, the once-shuttered wounds now on full display. She waves her angry finger in my direction, and points her injured mind like a laser at me. I make no attempt to dodge her searing light, and I bear its brunt with all of who I am.

Yet, I hear nothing.

Missing pieces of an ugly puzzle have now been found, and distorted images of a nasty jigsaw suddenly begin to fit. Memories, once discarded like empty refuse now seem to matter more than the air we once breathed, as seconds once forgotten now must align themselves to be counted.

Still, I hear nothing.

It seems I’ve been renamed a million times in the confines of a single sentence, and redefined eternally within the grasp of but one, angry thought. It seemed only a matter of time before the knives once thrown at her became weapons of her choosing. One-by-one she sliced, and one-by-one she’d use them all to find the single, sharpest blade. It seemed no wonder that even in her blindness, she never missed her target.

But, I heard nothing.

I could not look in her direction. I needed to remember her as she was before the battle took her away from me. I could not bear to see the Sun herself darkened, the Moon whittled away into nothing but a black hole within my heart. She had gone, from the greatest work of art into a child’s cartoon hastily painted on an outhouse wall.

Dammit, I heard nothing.

Finally, I forced my eyes open to gaze upon her brilliant Divinity. In the power of the moment I had forgotten how beautiful she was, and in the absence of my attention she had grown beyond my ability to grasp. I admired the way her hair flowed magically from her skin, and felt those eyes pierce through me in a way that destroyed every wall I had ever built, and leveled any obstacle I had placed between us.

Please, baby, tell me what you hear when you close  your eyes?

I heard nothing.  I searched for the knives she had used, but only found the one held tightly in my hand. I searched her for an outstretched finger, but could only find the one that I was pointing. I looked for her words, but only found the ones that were falling from my lips. It seemed everything that was, was in me.

“I hear everything,” I answered.

As she lit the middle candle I could see by the reflection on the wall that I had lost her. The darkness of my life was lit by nine, and the visions I had seen from her were nothing more than fantasies of my own design. I dreamt of having everything, and nothing, and here I was getting all I had ever wanted.

I reached for her empty hand, and embraced her gaze in my own. Then I let go, resolved to loving her more than she had been loved in her life.

“Goodbye,” was all that I could say. One word that said a million, one moment that brought eternity to life.

I heard nothing as I turned and walked away, and heard everything as each step brought me toward…

I do not care for idiosyncrasies. I do not care for morbid tales of broken hearts, or bloodied fields of forgotten memories.  I do not take to heart your showy dancing or your protestations of joy through the many tears you shed.

I do not look for false praise, or reactionary condemnation. I do not hope to be your savior, or loath to be the sinner for which you blame your anger on. I do not care for your desire, or hope for your acceptance.

I simply wish to live.

I will not compete for your attention, nor will I wallow in some pity in its absence. I will not pray to empty space for things within my grasp, and I will not create some faith on which to pin my hopes. I will carry the crosses placed upon my shoulders, and I will pick myself up when I fall upon the rock soil.

I do not ask you to wipe the bloody sweat from my weary face, but I will love you in the mere suggestion that you will. I will not beg for your hand to grasp my own, but I will hold you tightly if you do. I will not seek out your embrace, but I will protect you with my life should you seek shelter in my arms.

I will not beg you for mercy and will run you through should you try to force me to my knees. I will forgive you but I will not forget, and I will stand tall against the storms in my mind suggesting my memory should be shortened. If you cut me I will bleed, and my blood stains the tapestry we share forever.

My skin has been thickened by the lash, my heart hardened by the blades sent to slice it into pieces. My mind is strong, tested by the best bastards who’ve tried, and failed, to break me. My will has been tempered by the Devil’s own fires, fires that have singed to a hardened stone on which nothing feeds.

You will find me vulnerable, but if tested me you will find a Lion who feeds upon those who dare poke those tender spaces. The better parts of me are saved for those who love me, while the best parts of me are saved for those who would feed me to the vermin.

It is not the holiest of men who can smile through the suffering, or fake comfort in their pain. It is not the enlightened among us who can laugh at life’s misery or shout love from the mountains of bodies strewn about. The man who truly loves himself finds comfort in the truth. He allows his tears to fall, his passion to burn brightly through even the thickest walls. He accepts his own defeat, relishes in the glory of his victories, and never, ever, fakes a single thing about himself. He silences the voices in his mind with the clap of his hands, and lets them speak when such counsel need be heard.

The enlightened ones are warriors. They act through the cause of self not at the behest of past echoes in their souls, but in the cause of a moment not fully lived without the truth. They are unbridled in their self-expression, and they never buckle under the scrutiny of eyes made dim through the edicts of others. They take orders from an authority seldom heard, and bow only to altars that most will never see.

Such warriors are lonely hearts. It becomes hard to find others who understand the path, let alone can handle the journey. Yet they move in solitude through steps graced by divinity, feeling the soft caress of One Great Soul in each and every footfall.

When they seek out loving company they reach out to find only empty air. Such space acts as the softest wall, invisible lines whose memories create separation that only a few can describe. We find such wonderful people there who are always just beyond our grasp, moved always by a truth that in some way we are simply meant to be alone.

Yet there is no pity for the absence, no remorse in the setting Sun. It is what it is, a great symphony who always makes beautiful music, a simple harmony that always sounds just right. Warriors trust in the process, and have faith that waves will break just the way they are supposed to in the exact space they are meant to crash. There is no questioning the Great Sea whose tides will always ebb and flow in a matter mere mortals can only hope to see.

I will close my eyes again shortly, knowing full well that when the Sun rises above my reluctant home no one else will be there. I will smile and take my place among the stars whose light is present yet hidden from  some earthly view. It is the darkness that rescues the light from heaven, and it is the night that gives the day all the praise it can handle.

Good night. I will see you soon.

There’s a sultriness to my nights. In those moments when my mind has been cleared and my body is still, my heart speaks to me. In those moments after the daylight dust settles and the night mist begins to form, the greatest truths that I try to hide make themselves known. I am helpless, and I am made to listen.

And so I had a dream, and I can’t deny it’s truth even though when I awaken I will resist it.

I felt a hand in mine as the feeling came to life.  I looked for its source, and there you were standing firm, your beautiful eyes fixed upon a scene. I felt the flow of soft power cascade through me at the very sight of you, a familiar flow that comes throughout my day when you enter my thoughts. I took a moment and just gazed at you, enjoying the love that I felt, tenderly squeezing the hand the sought me.

There are so many secrets I withhold from you in the daylight. There are so many things I feel, so many stories both written and untold in your name. There are bountiful unspoken words that never escape my lips and truthful intentions that you will never know. I leave your life freely yours as the Sun conspires to save me from my feelings. In the light of day I can use my strength of will to withhold from you the greatest truth of all.

I love you!! 

Such beautiful words that never spill from my lips and that never grace your ears, hidden from you as the greatest testament to love I could ever offer.  I’ve watched you spread your wings both with and against the gale, and heard your stories of wild independence and painful submission to the heart. I’ve seen you in your fear, felt you in your resistance, and basked in the glory of your compassion.

So, I am in love with you, and in love with you I leave you to your journey untethered by my hand, unkissed by my lips, unmoved by my truth. I leave you be so that I may joyfully yet painfully watch you in your space, and bask in your triumph from afar. I hold you firmly in a distant embrace and count the minutes apart from you, even when the numbers become to great for my heart to handle.

Isn’t that true love?  Do I not love the rose I cannot cut? Do I not love the angel whose wings I refuse to clip, whose cloud I will not choose? Do I not love you more simply by not becoming a chain on which you bind yourself?

But ah! the pain of my empty hand upon this lonely waking moment. I think of you from a distance and my mind destroys the dream. I see you in my mind and my heart turns to something else. I am a warrior, one who guards the shuttered gates as fiercely as he opens them. For you, I guard the spaces that you roam with equal vigor, protecting the gate opened by a dream and then closed by a particular reality.

Yet, there are those moments in the stillness of night when the fortitude fades and the truth in me awakens. It seems they are not one in the same right now.

I feel your hand in mind as you study the scene before us. I hear my heart singing as my eyes take you in, my body surrendering to the truth, a story of lingering desire.

In that mist, my eyes follow yours to a scene that has your attention. There is a part of you lying ill upon a bed. My eyes go from the bed to you, and back again, trying to make sense of what I see. I feel you squeeze my hand as your head rests upon my shoulder, your body leaning more and more into me. I hear the image on the bed speak to you.

“You are free. I am almost gone, and you can move on.”

I get a sense of which part of you this is. It’s a part of me too.

“My fear is dying,” you say to me as you stay staring at the woman on the bed. “I’ve known her so long, it’s hard to imagine I won’t miss her.”

You lean more into me, and I become stronger to the task. I am your rock, and I will not fail you. Life has made me strong enough to hold us both.

“Go ahead and let it go,” the woman says to us both. I feel you move, and look to see where you are going.

You just turn, and look at me.

“I love you,” you say. “I’m sorry I made you wait.” Tears stream down my face in testament to a moment well worth the wait.

We kiss, finally.

Nothing that has happened matters. Ideas, thoughts, trials and tribulations all fade as our lips hold firm. Our lips part only to gaze back at the place where our fear rests. It seems it has faded too. There is nothing but a fire that remains. Perhaps we’ve lit a pyre as an homage to the moment.

I awaken peacefully, your final words echoing in my heart.

“Forever sounds so good with you.”

“It does,” I utter to the nothingness around me. I sigh as I close my eyes, hoping to capture forever the feeling of my dreaming moment.

I text you, you reply, I follow…then nothing.

Everything is back to normal. You come and go in a wisp, it seems, exactly as it should be. My thoughts bounce in and out of the insanity of it all.  Let go and move on, says one voice. Hold firm and be patient, says another. I’m not sure which is the voice of insanity, and which is the voice of reason. Perhaps it doesn’t matter.

I am an acquired taste, I reckon. I am not for everyone, I suppose. I approach my dreams with a dose of reality, and my reality with a dose of a dream. I make no excuses for the star I follow, or the footprints I’ve left behind.

So, I’ll just say that I love you. You know who you are even if you remain anonymous outside the ether. You may or may not read this, although its very likely I won’t know if you do. I’ll just shout silently to every star that will listen and every sea that we sail that I love you. I’ll just ride the waves and see what shores I’m taken to, hoping one will take me to a dream where we stand, hand in hand, “forever” sounding so good to our ears.

I have a feeling you’ll be so worth the wait, even if I never find out.

I can hear her whisper calling me through her wooded pines, and my own resistance is fading fast.

She asks me for my words, and I offer them as a gift. They become the fingers I use to caress her, the lips I use to kiss her, the arms I open to embrace her. In the union we are One, and in the sweet story of us there is no division, only a connection shared by lovers who cannot deny the presence of the heaven around them.

I inhale her sweet scent, and I wonder what’s taking us so long. The aroma of decaying yesterdays mixed with a potpourri of present and future promise surrounds me in my stillness. Her wonderful perfume begs me onward, raising desire that begs me to make love to the life I live, to offer myself in the sweetest surrender of my earthly vocation.

She is needed in my space, and she wants me in hers. To live a life of simplicity one must become simple, to live a life of love one must become a lover. One cannot wage wars on ideas and expect to find peace, one can not reject the folly of fools and think himself anything but foolish. One must stay true to his own course, focus on his own footfalls, and embrace the gift he is regardless of what the weather brings, and regardless of the condition of the path he has set upon. I’ve decided to hold firm to the place where my feet are set while surrendering to the footfall about to come. I’ve decided to love myself enough to listen to her calling, and to heed the echoes her voice has cast within me.

She wants me higher, and asks me to be up to the challenge of the climb. There is a freedom in the struggle, she says, a liberation in surviving a walk through knee-deep snow and bundling up against the coldest winter’s chill. There is love in the kindling that sacrifices itself to the fires lit to aid my journey, and a telling certainty in the whimsical shelters that I’ve found along the way. There is a truth in the view of the valley below, and a hope revealed in the beckoning summit above. There is a peace in the solitude, a joy in the companionship discovered there, and a love of the life found when you are no longer at the mercy of those who would distract you from your purpose.

You develop a strength in your survival which translates into a dedication to the path you are on. You stand a little taller each day regardless of the challenges you face, and you smile in the Sun despite the coldness in your limbs. You embrace the music the snow makes under your feet and the silence of your respite. You feel a togetherness in the aloneness, and a hint of gratitude in the fatigue, and realize a truth in the dream of living this life to your own desires, your own calling.

She does love me. She always has. She cares for me in a way unique to the understanding that we share. She begs me on to peace, showers me with love in the soft snowflakes falling upon my field, and teaches me so much about myself in the rocky climbs thrown deliberately in my way.

She loves me. She always has. Even as I’ve ignored her in her patience, denied her in her acceptance, and stepped on her in her sweet surrender, she has loved me. Even as I’ve dirtied her shores, and tainted her waters, she’s loved me. I’ve been a poor lover in return, but now as I listen to her whisper, I feel the bits of her within me coming alive.

I am reminded. I am her as she is me. I stare into her eyes and want to kiss her, but I can’t even muster an apology. I feel her wash along my skin and I melt with eager desire. She is my nature, true and plumbed toward a solidarity with uniqueness.

One day, I will sit upon a mountain and love her without the walls that I once created. I will embrace her tightly even as I admire her from a distance. I will spill my heart upon her soil and watch as flowers shoot up from those places that we share. She will know her lover in each kiss, in each dance, in each musical embrace.

Sitting with the churning waters that are now beginning to freeze with the winter’s tide, I am humbled by the patience of her power, and the forgiveness with which I’ve been blessed. I will love her back now, as I make my journey clear and my intentions known. She will guide me with her stars and lead me with her streams. I will feel her kiss with each drink, and be renewed with each breath of life that she provides.

You may not recognize me when this is over. You may not know me any more. Just know that I am in love, and that in love I can no longer pretend. Who you see, is me, a lover forevermore.

You don’t know me. Well, you do, but you don’t. I’m the one you barely notice in the sunlight, barely speak to in the rain. I’m the one you brush by on the sidewalk, the one you hardly see in your hurry to move along.

I’m the one who comments on your beauty, who makes whimsical remarks about your day. I’m the one who notices the soft lines around your eyes when you smile, and the way the sun reflects off the softness there. I see the tempered curves of your lips and the beauty of your lines before I even see the beauty that surrounds you.

I’m the man who loves your comments, who sees the wisdom of your words and the comedy of your ways. I listen to what you offer about your day without any effort, and know what parts of you need my attention before you’ve ever uttered the request.

I’m the person who would become an oak if you’d only lean in his direction. I’m the man who would become a crystal clear stream if only you’d bend your thirsty lips his way. The world would hear me roar and feel my bite if only you needed my protection.

I’m him. I’m the one you’ve been hoping for. I’m the one who answers your prayers in the night, who holds your hand in your moments of need. I’m the one whose embrace reminds you of some great sanctuary, of whose words take you to treasured places where no darkness can reside.

I’m the one who calls your name when the silence becomes too great for me to bear. I’m the one who’d never let you walk alone, even if that meant walking far behind you. I’m the one whose waited his entire life just to hear you say his name.

If only you knew me. If only you would know. If only I could tell you.

No greater pain hath man wrought on himself as the one of unrequited love. It’s there, upon the iron throne where the armor of fantasy and the sword of reality mesh, where flesh is pierced and prayers are answered. It is there I become the Master of myself, and it is there that I wait heaven’s great promise, either in this lifetime or the next.

I write, with an open heart and peaceful mind, waiting.

I love you. I know it in everything. I know it in nothing. I know it in moments of great chaos, and in moments of complete serenity.

I love you. You may not see it at all. You may not feel its power coursing through your Being. You may not know its peace, its acceptance, or its complete surrender.

In the dream we appear separate, but we are not, my love. We swim in the same vast ocean and dance in the same rain. We bask in the glow of the same Sun, and wish upon the same sea of stars. We tread upon the same sand and sleep in the same wilderness as we feel the same chilly air and wipe the same morning dew off our skin.

We are bound by the inexplicable and a sacred chastity for which we were made. We drink from the same wooden chalice, yet we taste different things from our one, true cup. We hear the same song, yet move to rhythms heard by different ears and translated by different minds. We are together even as much as we are apart. We are One even as much as we are completely different.

It is there, in the place exposed as we discard the layers of taste, of sound, of thought, that I love you. It is on that wonderful universal blank canvas that is adorned by all you are that I find the most beautiful artistry. In that field, gently tilled by a stilled mind and open heart, that I find my greatest power to embrace the parts of you that exist outside of who I think you are.

You are wonderfully recalled in the smiles of my stillness. You are beautifully thought of in the light that blinds my human eyes. You are vilified, denounced, and contested with the same energy that brings you into my arms.

I am easily discarded by you. Perhaps. I am easily forgotten by you in the throes of human pleasure. Maybe. I am simply a part of the tree; a twig, a leaf, a branch bouncing in the breeze.

In our minds we are the tree, yet in our truth we are so much more. There is no tree without the mystery, and it is in that mystery that you and I vanish toward the truth of who we are. We are not you, or me. We are not us, or them. We are. There is nothing more.

There is where I love you. Right there. To love you there is to love me there, for there is no difference. To feel you there is to feel me there, for we are all the same. To seek you there is to find myself, and to know you there is to know who I am without question.

You are not the leaf and I am not the branch. We are not even the tree. We are that which makes the tree One. We are that indescribable essence that takes the many and makes them whole. We are heavy, and we are weightless. We are free and we are shackled to our cause. We are stick and stone and every broken bone between them. We are the Universe, we are everything we’ve ever seen and nothing that we’ve ever known before.

I love you. Know that even as I throw my heavy stone in your direction.

I love you. Know that even as you watch me walk away.

I love you. Know that even as I drive my human experience over every cliff I find.

I love you. Know that even as you cast your words of anger at me, and respond with fires of my own.

I love you. Know that even as you convince yourself you hate me, and you discard me into the fires of your well-fueled melancholy.

And you love me, my dear. Even when you can’t stand the thought of me, you love me. Even when you can’t bear to think of me in the heat of your nightly game, you love me. Even when you are done, walking east to my west, I know that special place where you love me.

In loving myself I have found you. In that journey I have found myself. In that destination I have found the truth. In that journey I have found great purpose.

The trail of your tears are not the destination. They are the path. The beats of your heart are not the song, the silence between them is. The moments of happiness are not the mountains that must be climbed, the gaps between them is. The painted ideas of adoration and hate, fear and anger, honesty and consequence are not examples of love’s great truth, the canvas that allows for their experience is. You are the artist that paints your truth, it is love that accepts your brushstrokes.

Greatness is in simplicity, and confusion reigns in the masses distorted by conditioned, complicated realities. Beyond those, what greatness we will find.

Sometimes I just want to scream, to lie down on a soft space and let it all go…

It’s been a fight, an enormous struggle for the last 4 years. I’ve wanted to just say “fuck it” and let everything crumble, yet the fighter in me just can’t lie down in surrender to the shit storms I’ve experienced. I just growl, tighten my chin strap, and move forward.

I rarely complain about it. I rarely tell anyone about the struggles. I rarely dive into the self-pity that such things can provide, and I rarely make my way behind the shadows that seem to sometime surround me. I stand up, growl, and get ready for the fight. it’s been like that my entire life.

Yet, I’m tired. So tired. I’ve not known a real respite from the struggle. I’ve not felt complete peace in my life. I’ve not experienced the type of joy that spreads out beyond the small pockets of happy moments. There’s always been something.

I realize I am a master of me. I’ve chosen to need certain things in my life. I’ve chosen to adopt a certain paradigm in this existence. I’ve made agreements that make these things necessary, and ending those agreements just doesn’t seem possible.

So, I suffer. My body breaks down, the muscles constantly tense, the energy constantly wound into small balls in my back. My mind worries. I look at my children and hope for so much more. I want memories with them. I want their smiles and their laughter. I want them to have “remember whens” after I am long gone back to the dust from whence I came.

Things. This existence seems all about things. When does it all end?

I know, when i decide it ends. When I decide I’ve had enough. I decide when the old agreements need redoing. I am the Master.

I look back on the pathways I’ve walked. So much change has occurred there. I am nothing like I was, yet I am much more me than I’ve ever been. I’ve not been “fixed”, there was nothing ever broken. Things had to be, they had to happen the way they happened. Now, I scratch and claw to climb out of the holes I’ve dug, and I realize I will never get to this place again.

I will not dig myself into a hole. I will not be someone’s pet project. I will not succumb to the whims of the voices I was taught to hear. I will not fill my arms with empty potential, with angry rocks I can use to throw at myself.

There have been people who have helped out as I’ve walked along the way. There has been so much love shown there, so much understanding and acceptance. For the most part, though, I’ve been an island unto myself. I am here, just me usually, throwing punches at the shadows and slipping counters only I can see. Yes, they are invisible to most, but I can see them. And they sting when they land, especially since it seems I rarely land any shots of my own.

Not that I need many. When i land, I land good. When i miss, I miss just as good, and I stumble around like some punch-drunk has been who has fought for way too long.

Well, I know where I need to be, and what I need to do. Now that this rant is over, it’s time to get back to the business at hand. Surviving. Rebuilding. Working toward a goal that one day I’m part of something greater, something not so alone and not so tiring.

Ah, the lessons I’m learning. The truths I am gaining from tremendous loss. The strength I am finding in this enormous fatigue. The willingness to accept the hands of others as they extend them, the knowledge that in receipt of the gift I offer one of my own.

There is great wisdom in this life. Great wisdom, indeed.

She wasn’t used to men like him.

She wasn’t used to men who had truly found their power. Power not rooted in what was seen as  typical male arrogance, or macho cockiness, but in a true sense of self. She had never seen a man so able to stand tall against the storms of the world while also able to bend to the winds of love and compassion. She had never known a man so strong in his softness, so clearly defined in his own blurry lines, and so rigid in the flexibility of his own humanity.

Such uniqueness unnerved her and, in the unequal light from which she viewed all things, he became a villain. He challenged her ideas just by his existence, and he became an object of obscured venom shot in his direction but at others who had taken their toll on her.

She could see them in him.

She could hear them in his voice.

She could feel them in his touch.

She only knew them in his desire.

He never really existed to her. They did. His name was not his, it was theirs. His heart beat to their rhythm, his smile muted by the clouds others had created.  Clouds that separated two souls meant to know each other.

She considered the thin veils she had placed between them as necessary, but to him they were thick walls he could never climb. He craved her, but he also loved her. That love meant she was free to fly, to crash, to run free or imprison herself behind any bars she wanted. Greater than any desire he had for her body, there was a deep love of her soul.

So his altar was empty, and he slept alone amidst the foggy tales she would tell. He walked with an empty hand, and sat at a table with a single place setting. He’d run in the hills alone, and listen to songs that stirred his heart without her, his maiden lost to the mist of her own fears, her own choices.

She wasn’t used to men like him. Men who could love her even as she played with old memories. Men who could cherish her as much in her absence as they would in her presence. Men who could make love to her simply by doing nothing at all, save the simple prayer of her name in a final breath of consciousness.

In the mix of love and labor we lay, working through the mist and insanity of lives lived in universal perfection. Emptiness known through fullness, love known through fear, passion known through complacency. In short bursts we experience one to know the other, and in short bursts we see the fruits of labor through the love we share not often in the touch, but in the absence of such pleasantries. True love is not known as much on the down slope as it is in the climb, for we find much more relief as we sit upon a summit than we do in staring up at it from the base.

We all know them, we’ve all been them, and in the moment when we find ourselves in complete realization we forgive them. What a summit that is.

Awaken, beautiful flower, to your truth!

Awaken to the beauty that you are! Smell the sweet fragrance of possibility, the aroma of potential that defines  the beauty of your life. Feel the presence of an energy so powerful in its acceptance that it need do nothing to accomplish everything that you desire.

Awaken to the power of your smile, that beautiful reflection of a new day full of hope and promise. Realize the truth of darkness as it reminds you of the illusion of its veil when faced with the light of truth within you. Hold my hand in the space of human desire, and feel the warmth of a body that holds the Sun up for you, even in the moment when you can no longer see it. Know that it is there in the man who holds your hand in the darkness, who warms you in the cold night air, and who walk willingly into life’s walls with you, whether they are yours or of his own making.

You are blooming. You have bloomed. You will bloom again. You have given meaning to the Sun’s rising, to the rays of light that crest over some distant horizon, and to the truth that every flower has its morning because every flower has its night; and that dusk and dawn are similar except in the directions we are looking. Nothing else changes in their moment.

Somewhere, at some time, a man will bend himself to greet you. He will close his eyes to the world outside and inhale your essence, feeling nothing but the truth of who you are in the exchange. He will caress you while discarding some long-stored memories of fragrance past, and adore you for the emptiness that you have filled. He will not pick you, lest you wilt away, but will rather plant himself in the vast fields where you are, and share the fertile soils that give you life, realizing that nothing is true but the Oneness that you share.

A Oneness experienced in your shivers of delight as his lips touch your shoulder, as his arms snake around your waist, and his hands explore the flesh you surrender to his own. A Oneness known in the rhythm that you share, in the sacred space on which you melt together, in the eternal pool you create within each moment united by a common purpose. A moment that never seems to end, a moment impossible to define by space and time, a moment only known by lovers sown to be together, sprouted to know their simple truth, who bloom to the same inward power only seen through outward radiance.

Sometimes you just can’t hide a light under a basket. Sometimes the basket simply gives the light the appearance of life. Sometimes the basket is burned away by a singularity of purpose so intense that a once-separated light becomes one again with everything around it. The basket is not destroyed, it is simply transformed into the very light that gave it purpose. Love, made intimate by the basket, is then made one by its transformation.

Love, made separate in the waves of pleasure as they roll within, united in the peace that fills their gaps. Love, made separate pixels by the human artist that paints it in his image, finally made whole in the realization of love as a great canvas, accepting whatever image the dreamer will create.

Love, arguably complex in its simplicity, hard in its softness, completely united by the human chisel that hewns it. Love, sometimes defined in the outward chaos of the Universal order of things, or in the simple power of a scent that awakens a man to purpose, and gives a seed the power of realizing its potential.

And there I stand as you open, with the Sun cresting above the flat horizon behind me, giving the mountains before me a lovely tint of orange, Do not delay our meeting, or hide your scent from me. Do not close yourself to the possibility, or paint your colors falsely before my eyes. Stand there, open and exposed, and let me take you in as though you were the breath that gave me life.

And together we will enjoy the summers of our life, grow older in the autumn, lay dormant in the coldest winter, and be reborn in the promise of a spring renewal. Then, when our time here has ended, we will leave a space made better by our existence, forever marked by the moments we had shared.

Ah, such a dream can’t be laid waste by a reality…I will see you very soon.

I’ll take it with a grain of salt. I always do.

I’ll take your absence with a grain of salt. I’ll take your reluctance with a grain of salt. I’ll take your withdraw, your forgetfulness, your walls all with a grain of salt. I’ll take your unkind words, your lack of empathy, and the anger with a grain of salt.

I’ll watch you hide your feelings behind a grain of salt. I see you tuck in the aftermath of a zillion stories neatly behind a grain of salt, creating them as both relevant and irrelevant in a single breath. I’ll know you are you collect a hundred tears into a single grain of salt, and cast it into the wind into whatever direction it may go, assaulting whichever sensibility it may find along the way.

Sometimes, the little grains of salt we cast find nothing but open space. In others they find a wound, a single place where the insignificant become significant, the nightmare becomes a certain reality.  It’s ironic how something that may appear to be so small can create so much chaos, how something so necessary to our existence can be so painful.

Yet, our experiences, it seems, are based upon some little grains of salt somewhere.  We often dance around the fires of our lives not to some sacred music shared by all, but to some painful sound created when little grains of salt touch our sorest places. It’s a sound only we can hear, so we shout it to all around us, hoping in some way they will hear it too.

Rumi says, “Don’t turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandaged place. That’s where the light enters you.”

It’s also where the grains of salt enter you. Sometimes the bandage itself is laden with salt, and sometimes the light shows you just how tainted your bandages are. Sometimes you’ll remember that you can’t really heal until you throw those bandages away, and face the pains of healing.

In this life, it seems much more prudent to understand the value of the pain than it does to be a slave to it. How many undiscovered wounds would remain festering if not for the little grains of salt that show us the way to Rumi’s light? How many limped steps would we take? How many journeys would we not begin? How many tears would remain stored in some ungodly cavern burned deep without our soul if not for the exposed wounds that remind us to just let it go?

The purpose of the pain is in the pain. It is not the grains of salt others cast into the ether that hurts me. It is in my own darkness, my own expectations of the world, my own ideas of the way things should be that I suffer. It is in the longing for a touch that I find my lonely moments. It is in the desire to be wanted that I find rejection. It is in the need to feel accepted that I find the words thrown at me like those tiny grains of salt.  The wounds are mine, and I can only blame myself for ignoring them.

I began removing my bandages years ago. I wanted the salt to pepper my wounds like a desert’s wind-swept sands. I wanted to know each of them, intimately, for no other reason than to say goodbye. “Meet the demon in hell”, I would say, “and temper your sacred sword there! Do not run and hide, for the devil himself can only hurt you if you give him permission.”

So, I’ve healed. Some wounds have healed quickly, some have taken more time. Some are still open, but now I accept each grain of salt with a reverence.  Each sting awakens me to something new, each tinge of pain reminding me I am still alive and cognizant enough to know the Sun is coming. Then, upon the breaking dawn, I see…that place where the bandage once set, the light entering.

And peace.