Month: March 2022

end.

blue solsticeLeave a comment

At the end of my life, what will I remember?

Will it be what I think about now, the echoing distance of people from my life as its lived ever forward? What about those coming in? —their fresh eyes not holding me to my past selves, no old hurts held in hands I couldn’t quite see. Will they end the same, different?

The newness of any day requires the ending of the last one, the things held and said and felt rested and resigned. The page turned on what happened, to look to the next good thing coming, not afraid of another ending, yet ever aware of its possibility.

In any room I walk into there may be someone who loves me, fears me, is irritated by me, and even at times hates me. But here’s what I didn’t always know; in that same room there is also me: who at times loves me, fears me, is irritated by me, and yes, hates me.

I have waged a war with others when all the while I could have made peace with myself. Isn’t that what we all are searching for when we want someone to think better of us? That we feel better toward ourselves, that we become convinced of our own goodness by consensus.

Isn’t that also why we might be so tired?

I bought a sweatshirt a year or two ago that said ‘I am not for everyone’, and life has helped me to believe this to be true. The world is full of endless flavors and I wanted everyone to choose mine, to find my own goodness in others thoughts of me—now I know it just doesn’t work that way.

The freedom to hate a flavor is allowed to anyone who needs it. That is grace. That is love. And at the end of my life I will remember that.

note.

blue solsticeLeave a comment 
The last note of the song I sing you will be love. 

Never mind the other notes, the high and sharp ones, the instruments tuning their swelling  chaos, the flat tones lost in the rush to be complete, finished. Never mind the dropped sheets of well crafted verses of all the ways I wished it would have ended. 

I know you won’t be coming in on the chorus, to sing a soul filled harmony on the  bridge we left our locks on. I know this, and yet…

It doesn’t seem to matter now that the strings missed their cue, and the horns stood silent when the point was made, leaving the stage frighted lyrics alone in that echoing hall. It matters what is still there, singing. 

You won’t ever hear this song. 

And still—I hope in all the thrumming of the universal orchestra there will be this one last low note, achingly sweet and longer than most, and one day, maybe faraway and distant, you turn your head a certain way and listen. 

Maybe then, in that far off then, you will know, the last, most important note of the song I have sung for you was love. And maybe then you will know it was for you.

gone.

blue solsticeLeave a comment

I have learned a few things lately, some lived, some lost, some dreamed. I have learned that I love wholeheartedly who is in front of me, and am just now learning that those behind me lighten that love, instead of darkening it.

The ones behind, those I have lost, through the turns of the earth and its unending evolution to other worlds, those slipping their bodies to find white-lit horizons, showing up in other ways, in nightly multi-colored plays while I sleep.

Those who have left in this life, their story of me exploding into so many blossoming words, showing up in other ways, in their absence, the memory of us laughing.

Those very things behind me fuel love, and now that I know this, the love unleashed in front of me is purer; unbridled, and free.

I dreamed last night, sitting across from a broken heart, her words telling me my pain allows her to not feel better, not quite yet. What is hurting is coming toward her, and she says the grittiness of the things I have mourned allows her the grace to wait to feel better, the expectation that we won’t find the silver lining, that she can be wounded, healed and released all in her good time, not mine, not ours.

I often dream what I don’t yet know how to do, the lesson taught by wise hands that no longer hold me here, in this world. I wish I knew who taught me, I have asked to know, and only feel quiet.

I have lived so many years in the belly of the beast of ‘feeling better’, and now I know, the not feeling better is a gift to those in front of me, those who I love wholeheartedly, while those behind me leave their trail of soft goodbyes or sand littered regrets, never knowing the flowers that will bloom from that sacred, holy place.