Category: Short Stories (Page 30 of 46)

In the distance, I hear a rumble.

I look for you, but you aren’t there. I feel you, but have no idea where you are. I long for you, but will have to wait to be satisfied.

In the morning after the greatest sunset of my life I am wanting more. In the morning after the sweetest darkness I am searching for the light. I am whole but halved, loved but alone, searching yet knowing I have discovered everything. My hand is full but empty, my thirst satisfied even as I sit wanting more. I am certain yet doubtful, strong but weak, absent-minded yet all-knowing. I love you even as I fear the very thought of your existence.

Men are but paper filled with sand. We are easily torn yet hard to the touch, and as I watch the dust swirls mark the spot of your departure a bit of me tears as a bit of me hardens. My heart reaches out for you as my hand stays still, my soul screams as my voices lays silent. A tear forms somewhere but you’ll never see it spill. I want you as I recoil, need you as I need no one, let you go as my mind grasps firmly at the memory.

“You are safe here. You will always be safe here. I can protect you from everything save one keen enemy. That enemy is you.”

In the morning after your warrior stands ready to defend you. I am strong but cannot carry the weight that bears you down. I am ready to shine a light to whatever darkness you wish to expose but you have to choose to expose it. I am ready to be a blade that cuts the string that binds you but you have to hold it tight. There is nothing we can’t do, no river we can’t forge, no universe we can’t cross. Yet I cannot drop the baggage you choose to carry, and I cannot disarm you of the weapon you choose to harm yourself with. I am but a man who has let go, who has found a light, but who stands with you, ready to be a shield, ready to be a light, ready to be who he is in spite of footsteps he hears behind him.

Soon, that rumble within you will exist out there, without you. Soon, you will tire of the fear and the muddy climb to nowhere. You will find your foothold and you will climb, you will find your truth and fear will run from you like a wild horse you have no desire to ride. One day you will find that rumble in the distance, and you will look over at me with a smile. You will know the sweet music of your heart because you have heard the rumble all around you, and you will find ecstasy in the very notion that you are never, ever alone.

In the morning after you will shine, and as you rise from the horizon all will know your beauty. I honor you, your journey, and your vast ocean of possibility by loving you all the same. I honor your night, your twilight, and your breaking dawn. I honor you then, now, and in the morning afters sure to come.

Until we meet again, I remain…

You sit, content in your world, smiling at the stillness, the goings on, the peace of it all. You love the way the soft breeze strokes your face in contrast to the heat of the sun and how the cool waves feel caressing your feet once scorched by the summer sand. You will bask in the clear-blueness of the sky above, and relish the security of the firm earth in which you feel deeply rooted.

Then the pendulum swings…

The storm clouds gather all around you as the stillness turns to chaos, the peace turns to rage. The soft breeze becomes a pointed wind now stinging at your skin, and the cool waves become frothy and begin pounding at the foundation of your resolve. You shrink in fear from the darkened skies as you focus on the thunder that breaks your peaceful pose, the sand now shifting beneath feet that once held firm. The undertow grabs at you, threatening to pull you under, and you feel helpless in the midst of nature’s great fury.

You are not helpless. You are not without options. You are a Being of courage and experience.

So, you shift with the sand, shielding your eyes from the grains of sand sent at you like bullets from an unseen gun. You dig your feet in deeper, knowing that time and life has taught you how to float with the currents when they finally pull you out to the unknown sea. You know struggle will only tire you, and you will drown before you regain your strength. So you surrender and vow to ride the current and the storm out for its duration, knowing full well that you were meant to learn something in the experience, and you actually smile in the realization that you are in for one hell of a ride.

Then the pendulum swings again…

You have survived the storm, and have found yourself back on the sand. The place is different, but you will love it just as you have all the other landing spots in your life. You realize you value the storm because it helps you travel to places you would have never seen without it, and because it challenges you in ways nothing else can. Soon, the challenges become easier as you learn to relax in them and learn from them, and you see the storms as great teachers in your life with you the great student. Now, the stillness becomes more profound, the breeze more subtle, the waves a bit gentler. You hold a little less firm to the sand even as you focus a bit more on the moment, and your attention becomes a bit more dedicated to the smile that crests your weary lips.

Someday, you realize, the pendulum will swing again. Maybe that time you will hardly notice, instead seeing its back and forth as nothing more than the human game your soul wants to play. You’ll accept it all, and you’ll love the places you visit and the moments you share without question and without concern. You see suffering as optional, and love as the great hand on which your pendulum swings.

That is, after all, the purpose of the experience. When the pendulum swings you either swing with it or it hits you. It is your choice, your decision, as to which happens throughout. Enjoy your journey, and the powerful being that you are.

“There will be a day when you realize that life does not happen to you, that you happen to life. Then, you will realize everything you ever needed to know.”

♥

“I’m hurting,” I heard her say through lips held tight and eyes that overflowed with a painful truth.

“I know,” came my reply.

Yes, I knew. I could feel the demons within her sprouting like seeds she had planted in the fertile soil life had tilled for her. I could sense in her the affirmation of a life lived in self-doubt, in self-loathing. I could feel the memories well up within me, memories of the day I left it all behind.

“When does it end?” she asked. I wasn’t sure if her question was rhetorical, or if she really could withstand the answer.

“When you choose it to end. When you want it to. When you finally see the world through different eyes.  Your own eyes and not the eyes given you, and you want to be free.”

And so it went.

She is so beautiful and doesn’t know it. She sees only her physical beauty. She worries about her complexion, how her breasts look, how tan her skin is. She frets over her hair and the paint she uses to hide what she sees as her flaws. Words like “crows feet” and “wrinkles” offend her, as does each new candle added to her birthday cake. She chooses her partners in life based on what brings her a sense of self-value and, in turn, wonders why they treat her in the way she treats herself. She is often vain, and wonders why others treat her vainly. She is often dishonest with herself, and wonders why others are dishonest with her. She is blind and wonders why others can’t see.

She tries to grasp time and suffers as it slips through her fingers. She tries to hold on to vanity and suffers when it reminds her of how little time she has left.

“Have you ever felt love?” I ask her. “Real love. Love that sets you free. Love that never fails you.”

“No.”

My heart breaks. We so often rely on mirrors to show us who we are that we forget what we are looking at. She’ll never know how much I love her because she will only focus on how much I don’t. In her own mind, in her own way.

I love her, so I let her go. My demands will only make her hurt more when she can’t meet them. My faith will only make her doubt more when she can’t grasp it. She could never live in my world without putting bars over the doorways, without drama starring as the riptide that drags her under.

She puts her head on my shoulder and sobs. I can feel her grasping at me as she sinks, trying hard to drag me under with her. I can’t follow her, and I’ve become a master swimmer.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper through the ether between us. “I can’t go there.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t see what you see. I don’t feel what you feel. I’m sorry, I’ve been there and never wish to go back.”

We both knew it wouldn’t be long before she was in the arms of another cardboard cutout, another false sense of self-vindication.  This one would be different. He would care. He would be the honest soul who would make all of her dreams come true. He’d be The One.

I looked her squarely in the eyes. She averted her gaze, pretending as best she could to be studying something else that didn’t tweak her wounded heart.

“I’ll see you soon,” I said, knowing full well that when the Next One fell about she’d be back, searching again for the very thing she couldn’t look at, the very thing she wanted but could never bring herself to deserve. She knew I’d be there, like the warm water she couldn’t bathe in, the hot beach sand that made her search for shoes.  She’d never believe that happiness wasn’t something you found, it was something you were.

“Alright, thank you baby,” I heard her say as I turned and walked away. I wondered if she felt it, if even for a second. I wondered if she’d recoil from the feeling, or if she’d never get enough. I wouldn’t, couldn’t, stick around long enough to find out. I had to remain on the surface, breathing, and never turn back toward the shallow depths in which she thrived. There I was, left alone in the wisdom for which I’ve lived, in the ocean of which I’ve chosen to reside.

Sometimes we bare our souls without even realizing it.

Sometimes the warm winds clear our minds and pull the threads from around us, rendering us naked in a process of transformation we often deny and ignore. Sometimes we simply lose ourselves in moments passed, and we are left helplessly present but hardly accounted for during the only parts of our lives we could ever hope to change.

There are times when the gently crashing waves wash away the dunes we have built around our wounds, when the silent, foamy surf takes us to places we have never been before. Under the gaze of a bright, moonlit sky we realize our unconsciousness, and suddenly become aware of how little awareness we allow. We scan the paths we have traveled trying to make sense of it all, until we realize the only sense those footsteps make are in the very moment we aren’t seeing. Sometimes blindness gives us back our sight, and muteness gives us back our voice.

Then, suddenly, we see it. Now. We have arrived, even if only for a second. Sometimes, a second is all we need. Sometimes a second is all we will ever have.

Sometimes a tiny crack in the shells we have built around our hearts is enough to remind us of the beauty of the light. Sometimes a single note of music is enough to remind us of our song. Sometimes a single grain of sand brings the beach to our feet, and a single ray of sun brings a closed-eye, wide-armed embraced of the unseen gift of warmth. Sometimes it’s the little things that bring us the biggest joy, and the invisible notions of something wonderful that bring us back to who and when we are. Sometimes it just takes two hands touching to remind us of the greatest power the Universe has to offer.

Sometimes we simply must surrender. Sometimes it takes more courage and more strength to be afraid, and sometimes it takes but a single, tiny cloud to block the greatest light this Earth has ever known. Sometimes you need to lose to win, give to receive, and honor the cliché in order to know something new. Sometimes you need to die to find life anew, and sometimes you simply need to cry your eyes out to find the laughter once again.

I wish I knew all of this when I once condemned the wretched moments in my life, but then again sometimes you need to condemn in order to be free of judgment. Sometimes you need to forget it all to remember who you are, and sometimes you need to fall to reach the summit.

Sometimes you need to stop questioning in order to hear the answers. Sometimes you and I just need to sit still and watch. Sometimes the silence is the loudest sound you’ll ever hear, and sometimes stillness the most active you will ever be. Sometimes death will bring you life, and absolute despair will grant you the greatest hope you will ever live to know.

Then, sometimes you will see love seeing you, and you’ll be looking at what is looking back at you.  Sometimes the most chaotic mess you know will find the stars most aligned, and sometimes the worst outcome is the best answer to your prayers. Then, sometimes, you’ll give thanks to those wretched moments and, sometimes, never need remember them again. You won’t forget, you just won’t remember either.

I look forward to the sometimes that make all the times, and to the vast sea of times that have come, will come, and are now. It is there I have found the love I thought I lost, and the life I will never cease to live again.

It seems my biggest fear is to fall

To fall “there”

To fall beyond where my eyes can see

Back to the absence of this certain sanity

To a place where I once lived so comfortably

Where all I can remember now is pain.

There is a shiver to the moment, the moment when you realize you have lost control of everything. You want to run, but your legs are weak. You want to fight but you can’t lift your arms. You want to scream but the air escapes your lungs. You want to snarl, growl and charge, but alas you simply…

Surrender.

Ponds of energy form in my heart and spill out through the window of my eyes. Nervousness and fear mix with pure joy there as a true testament of a life well lived, a testament that quickly forms but slowly evaporates back to the very air that gave it life.

I’ve withdrawn from my darkest places, recoiled from the light shining high above for far too long. I see now, clearly, the place I’ve most bandaged, the place I’ve been most wounded. I feel, now, the light breeze of love touch me where I am most sensitive. I hear the words form deep within me as the Voice speaks a truth I’ve hidden for far too long.

“I am afraid.”

The Lion within me roars with unbelieving agony.

“Fuck that. You fear nothing, you run from no thing. Fight, you bastard…”

The Elephant within me blasts a simple note…

“You’ve hurt yourself so often here. For that there is a reason. Love yourself, there, to know yourself here.”

The Wolf cannot be silent long.

“Find a safe place. Go there, and do not come out until the hunt begins. There is safety in the cave.”

I can hear another voice softly sing from the mist within, a voice much different from the others.

“I love you too,” she says.

There, it is settled. Love is frightening to the darkness, scary even to fear. Beyond the nestled security of pups and cubs, life cuts and wounds us all deeper then even our own capacity to understand. Life also heals and comforts to heights equal to those depths, offering joy in equal parts to sadness, ecstasy in equal parts to pain. Our focus acts like a magnifying glass, creating a larger mountain or deeper valley depending on where we look.

When we are cut deeply we begin to fear the largest knives. When we are burned by the Sun we can fear even the slightest ray of hope. Here, I stand, wanting to jump but remembering the landings of my past. There, the shiver starts again.

“I love you too,” she says.

I feel her hand take mine. She somehow knows the battle raging within me, even through the cool exterior of my body. There is a battle within her too, and then a realization.

We are both somewhere else. She is there, the place where her wounds formed. I am somewhere else too, remembering the battles that almost killed me, fearing the blade that cut me deepest.

“Time to hunt,” protests the Lion.

“Come back here,” suggests the Elephant.

“Run to the comfort of night,” demands the Wolf.

“I love you too,” she says.

Fuck. OK, baby, take me. How did you sneak up on me? I’ve tried to be alert, tried to run, tried fight, tried to scream.

Where did you come from? I didn’t see you there until it was too late. Now, I can’t help but see you everywhere. I see you the waves that break upon the early morning shore. I see you in the clouds that sprint across the summer sky. I see you in the blades of grass, in the grains of sand, in the very stones on which I walk. I fear you and love you with equal depth, and know you as much as you are a mystery.

Take me. Own me, and do with me what you will. Whose footprints are those in the sand behind us? When did that tide come in? When did the full moon take over where the sun once was? How did I miss it all?

A growl presses hard against my skin from somewhere deep within. I want to hold firm, but she is the only thing I can find to hold on to. I start to fall, but she picks me up. I start to doubt but she looks into my eyes.

“I love you too,” she says.

The Lion purrs in holy worship.

The Elephant bows his head in praise.

The Wolf just howls at the moonlit sky, a song that echos as she kisses me.

My mistake is thinking I would fall in love again one day. Here, I’ve risen to love. Flying can frighten the grounded soul, but I find I like the clouds as much as the beach, the open air as much as the snow-capped mountains. Here I’ve learned I love the heights of flight as equally as I love the depths I’ve dove to, that I love the darkness as much as the light. A lighthouse has no purpose without the deepest, darkest dead of night.

“I love you,” I whisper in her ear as the mist clears, our bodies swirling in the moment.

“I love you too,” she says.

In the calmness of my inner space I feel. You.

In my stillest moments I feel the seeming eternal moods of joy and hope, love and passion, anticipation and devotion to the truth. I feel the endless motion of a sea that never ends, of a space within that breaks me open to keep me whole. My heart holds firm to feel you, while my mind drifts off to places we have never been in moments we have never shared. There my soul dances knowing who you are, and there the whole of me sings praise of the simplest truths discovered in the silence.

You are here, beating with my heart, dancing with my soul, guiding my hand and hammer to chisel a new stone we two can share as one.

My heart.

My heart embraces the gentle threads that bind us. Like the strings on a golden harp gently played to our tune, my heart lightly touches the strings to feel their vibrations. In this, one silent moment of a life spent searching, my heart beats within the sounds of love, within the holy commands of the Unknown, to the masterful beats of maestro no man has ever seen. I hold you there, knowing that neither time nor space shall part us from the sweet embrace of destiny, feeling it all in one single bump of many raised upon my skin.

My heart knows. It has always known. Like some masterful artist whose brush can do no wrong, my heart knows. In the roughest seas that have changed my shorelines forever, my heart has known. In the calm waves of a beautiful morning sunrise, my heart finds all it has to know. Now. Here. You.

Take heed, my sweet Lover, our time is coming.

My mind.

My mind drifts off to where you are. There, I can hear the sweet sound of your voice as it brings me to my full attention. I can hear your thoughts there, finding your dreams as tattered or as intact as you want them to be. I can feel your lips pressed to mine, you skin holding me firm as I touch the deepest parts of you. I can feel you move, hear you utter the loudest prayers of ecstasy, and know where I am is where I need to be. There is no illusion in the depths we share; depths we discover as surely as the rays of light peek over the distant horizon, depths without end and as insatiable as any desert sand to whatever rain my fall.

My mind knows little for sure, but it knows enough to listen to my heart. There is an indestructible truth in the bond the stillness creates between my mind and heart. Time and truth have tested me, and those tests have taught me to have faith in the voice I hear from within, a voice not of man or myth or any mind ever known. It whispers to me now, and the words are not translated by my heart or my mind, but by something in-between. There you will find the best of me, the best that writes my unbridled truth, the best that sings songs to you in the nights I lay alone, the best that knows you are coming.

My Soul.

My Soul. That great voice that sits between the hopeless parts of a hopeful man caught daydreaming in blissful revelry to the promise of tomorrow. In a vast field of possibility that is my life, my Soul rules with a hand sometimes hard and sometimes soft but never unjust. There, my Soul guides me to face the challenges of a life lived; challenges my mind swears it cannot bear but my heart accepts with a willing reverence to a different truth. I am pulled into valleys seen too deep and pushed onto mountaintops thought way too high, always reaching whatever plateau I am asked to sit upon. I bear the scars of falls taken and stumbles made as well as the strong hands that have continually brushed off legs unwilling to buckle and a back unwilling to bend. Through a destined defining I have left beauty and riches behind to find truth and simplicity in the kindness of my heart, the wisdom of my mind, and the mastery of my Soul.

My Soul does not know, but it wants to. It asks for the chaos, it demands the darkness because it is the order, and it is the light. With each passing storm the winds become more subtle, the thunder quieter, the ground less caked with mud. The hearty growls and determined snarls were once booming echoes in the empty space around me, now quieted by the divine distraction of you. Like a drop of sugar in a class of cool water, you come. Like a cool drink on a hot day you bathe me in a certain type of comfort. I know you are there, my Soul and my heart tell me so, and I hear you in my mind as clearly as any church bell ringing in a heavenly parade.

I will take you, one day, and show you my little space of heaven. There the doubts will be destroyed, the debts of a million lifetimes paid in a single kiss. You will laugh with me, enjoy the empty spaces I have made, and listen to laughter created by the cries and bask in the light created by the darkness as it peaks over our shared horizon. There the ocean and the sand will demand our feet as surely as our hands and lips demand each other’s.

In this I know our certain truth, our inevitable journey where two become one, where it all makes complete sense. I breathe a laugh while I inhale another thought of you and I exhale a not-so-quiet sigh. We know, don’t we? Yes, I believe. You.

Good night, my love, my dream, my beating heart. Know that beyond these fields where mortal thoughts play there is a space for us. Know that with each passing moment, with each distant grain of sand that draws us close, we are nearing that embrace for which we were destined.

I haven’t written to you in a while, but know that in the silent prayers of your parting lips I hear the angels swoon. Know that in the mindful pants of a beating heart I hear the waves carrying away those castles of sand we have built along the way. Know that in the simple notes of a poor man’s bowl I hear a promise of heaven’s coins; you are the riches that fills this longing soul’s coffers, and the answers to a million hopes through a zillion tears rained out from an eternal storm of which there need never be respite.

I know that these tests that life creates have spawned countless memories for us to play. I know the wisdom of the mighty crosses that we bear, and as the prayers of hope for a lighter load bathe over us like water from the clouds above comes the realization that we simply need let go, and the wooden frame that bends our backs and buckles our knees will simply disappear. Oh how powerful we are, my Love!, yet to others we are but simpletons dancing to music not yet written for singers who have yet to meet the stage for which they were born.

Now a breath, a pause, and silent statement to whichever gods will listen before I close my eyes and this day in loving harmony. Good night, my love, my dream, my beating heart.  Until we meet again.

I feel you
I can almost hear your voice
You are close, yet far
From me, to you, my shining star.

In something, like that, I know. The cool breezes, the light touch of the spring sun, the cool water cascading down my parched throat…they are you, they are truly you. Like a comfortable patch of grass on a rocky hillside, you spring from the whirlwind in my mind; a place I can rest when the journey has beaten me down, a respite from the storm when my skin has become too weathered from the pounding rain.

There, a man offers this woman his weakness. She can take it. She is fierce, and the very idea of her strengthens his weary limbs and drives the blood through his veins. He stands this ground because this is where she stands, and it is sacred to him. He gives not an inch to the demons who would possess his mind if only he would fall to their darkness.

Here, he carries no shield but wields a mighty sword. There are no enemies to slay in this place. Rather, the sharpened steel flays open his thickened armor, baring his tested skin and exposing his naked soul to a warrior of equal skill and experience. She takes him whole and does not break him, instead creating bumps on his mighty arms and bringing a smile upon his waiting lips. Warrior lovers need bring no battle to the loving space they share, and no enemies dare face them as they make love upon the sacred ground they have claimed as their own.

Such power is best left alone to the gods who honor it, and such prayers are best left to the mighty priests who would dare cry out in an ecstasy mere mortals have never shared.

Your heart
I feel it growl within the breaths of my soul
Our sweat mixes in this honored state
I've died a death well worth the wait.

He knows even as he feigns uncertainty in the moment. Their scars scream, then heal, with each thrust of their insatiable passion. Gone are the tales of woe that once defined them, replaced instead by a new chapter written on new paper of a beginning neither could foresee coming, but certainly would not stop. Uncertainty is a habit hard to break, and the gates we place on our hearts are often difficult to open, but these warriors do not fear new beginnings. They only fear repeating old ends, and in the insanity of catering to demons of their own making, both have realized the best victories are the first ones where heart and wisdom are challenged and vowed to the ends of courage. Both warriors step, together, toward that light, and both sense a place of common virtue, and of united wisdom.

She looks at him with eyes he’s known his entire life, and the uncertainty shudders from his being. He holds her in her strong arms as her fear is released in a sigh that escapes her lips. They lay together silently, each heart beating its own testament of truth to a moment that will never end even as it shifts to other places, other times, in other shades of white.

Your mind
I feel it recoil in unholy memories
In passioned fear our hearts deny
Do not cry, do not cry

When the demons come he will wipe the tears from her beautiful face, and when the cuts return she will wipe the blood from his tested brow. Such things lovers do for one another, and in liberated swirls they will dance upon the battlefields of life. They will love their fierceness, admire their devoted desire, and quench an insatiable thirst for passion each has for one another. They will live their lives naked in each other’s presence, and they will never search for shelter where there is no room for the other. They will brave the hail and the rains and the driving winds, fear no lightning and hear no thunder. They will only hear each other’s heart beating loudly when the storms arrive, and they will seek no shelter beyond the lover’s embrace in which they only know their truth.

Such things are things on which I dream, a new chapter for a book not yet written by a hand not yet created. From the breath I now draw from the air that we surely share, I know such a warrior is there, dreaming the same dream, knowing the same wisdom that molds my very footprint in the sand. Soon, the clangs of steel will be replaced by the harmony of two lovers dancing shamelessly under the white light of the moon, and awakening within them the many shades of white presented as gifts from the mighty rainbow that binds them to one another.

I await your arrival, keeping you in the dreams I’m sure to have between now and then. Walk with confidence, my princess, and use this time wisely toward a purpose of heaven’s will. Somewhere, near the middle, I will find you, and we will know…