Return Policy

She wondered what it might feel like to let loose some of these regrets.  Return them for refunds where possible, refusing any and all store credits, seeing as that was part of the problem in the first place.

Backdoor.

She said life should be full of good things.  Just good things.  So let those other bits go.  Open the back door so they can escape without making a scene or alerting the neighbors.  Soon you'll be able to close the screen door, cause all that's left with be so small they'll float right through the screen.

Mutations

I've decided that I'm going to keep loving you anyway.  Even though it is changing.  And perhaps by saying those words last week, and you know which ones I mean, I severed all that may have been future-possible.

But the future is both a short and long ways off.  And like all futures, takes turns that we never expect.  And life is not really full of mistakes and miscalculations ~ but rather opportunities to be beautiful in different ways.  Beautiful in pain and transfiguration.  Beautiful in joy and opening the heart to things that most of us are afraid to dream about or imagine.

So even though I'm transfiguring.  Morphing into shapes that hurt my body and mind and squeeze my heart in previously unimagined ways.  And make me doubt a sunny summer's worth of dreaming... I'm going to keep my heart open.  To you.

But also to the rest of it.

I don't Know

I don't yet know how to go on.
I thought I did.
But I don't.

I don't know how to make a life.
Without you.
And I feel like I've been.
Cut in two pieces.

And those pieces are weeping.
And bleeding.
Yet are whole alone.

Foreign Languages

She said, the thing that was the heaviest, most significant, grave even, to learn was this:  Love doesn't alway have a feeling.  Or at least feelings that you still recognize.  So often it is silent and maybe even a little dull.  Its language becomes so familiar, we forget that it ever made your heart race trying to understand its unique dialect.

Love is simple.  Its when you go to bed and your foot drifts under the cover to touch him.  Or you curl your back into his side just to steal his heat and he reciprocates with a kiss on the head.  Love is picking up milk (and that special chocolate he knows you love) and taking out the garbage.  And seeing your person across the room at a party and knowing that you'd introduce yourself all over again, if today were the first day.

I have known real love.  Not the make believe kind.  But the kind whose language you forget you know.  Love that withstands all kinds of storms and leaves you ravaged and wrecked, but still worthy in his eyes.  Protected and safe and warm.

And I didn't know all of this until it went away.  Was removed.  No longer extended.  As though a web that I've been carried by just suddenly disappeared.

And lonely is like I never imagined it could be.

Sad.

She closed it down.  No visitors allowed.  And realized that what she needed most was a private space to grieve.  It's not easy, loving and not loving.  Wanting and not wanting.  Always being between these spaces.  In the gap.  The slice that separates the sides of the coin, so that one never knows if they are heads or tails.

You've gone.  Driving.  Hurting.  Thinking.  Away from this house of uncertainty.

And I'm here.  Wondering.  Missing.  Tired and half dead.  Feeling the ghosts of who we were, in other days,  hiding in closets and slipping down the hall to the bedroom.

I lit a candle for you tonight.  In honor of the multitude of things I love and have loved about you.  Begging myself not to hurt us this way.  And yet on I go, unable to turn back time nor (deep in the recesses of my heart) wanting to.  I don't know what comes next.  I don't know how to breathe.  I don't know how to smile or laugh.  I have no idea how to be anything but numb.

Right now, all I know is how to let the wind whip me and the rain pelt me.  And to be tired but not sleep.  And hungry but not eat.

Damn You

She said she went in search of you.  But you eluded, as you always did.  Showing up on your own timing, expecting the world to bow down and make way.  As though you were Caesar or Adonis.  Demanding in your swagger that she imagine all of the ways you were capable of moving over and through her.

Now

It was the present, not the future that was playing on her mind.  Tears had been expeditiously replaced by a new set of personal freedoms.  She was prospecting for freedom.  Panning rivers of time, sifting through sediment, intent on gold and rubies.  The now seemed a good place to stake a claim and dig a little deeper down, unearth treasures that had been covered and forgotten.

Change

She said that everything still looked the same from the curb.  Friends continued to walk by and stop in.  The phone kept ringing.   The PVR kept recording.  The dwellers were still getting up and going to work on time.  And feeding the dog at 6pm each night, like she had become accustomed to and demanded in that way that only an old dog can.

And inside, everything still had a place.  The plates were still in the cupboard beside the sink.  The towels were still stacked neatly in the linen closet just outside the bathroom.  The washer and dryer went through its daily cycle.  They still vacuumed once a week and cleaned the shower every few days.

But where the eye could not see, where the hand could not touch... everything had changed.  And sooner or later, the outside would look different too.

Untitled, Unwritten

I know I'm getting what I want, she said through a cleanse of tears.  I just wish it didn't feel like I'm losing so much.