New Memories

Your eyes gleamed that day with mischief.  I saw you picking me out of the crowd long before I ever reached where you stood.  Our magnetic poles once again syncing with superpower force.  Gravity still holding us down but not apart. Out of the corner of my eye I saw your brother register that it was me, surprised by this reflection of the past.  He kept hedging a look, silently questioning, piecing together the deja vu of it all.  Condemning me for lifetimes of always finding my way back to you.

I tried to remember years back, just how it was you used to looked at me.  But the best I could recall was one time in my parents' kitchen, how you lifted me onto the washing machine and kissed me until my last sense had long fled.  You always had an intensity.   Seeing me in ways I don't think I was yet capable of seeing you.  I'd give you more credit for that now.  Now I know that you say what you say, create the moment and life as it is needed.  Did you always do that and I missed it?

On this day, I felt it as my smile wrapped you up, knew my eyes were snapping with expression.  My heart opening a channel as we matched each other word for unspoken word.   The observers read more than either of us would have liked.  I reached out to touch your arm just before I turned to go so that later, when I wanted to remember, I would know that it was real, that I could trust the memory.

Embers

She said she'd remember tonight years from now.  How they sat under the stars in the backyard.  On an unusually warm October night.  Watching the northern lights glow green hues across the sky and listening to the dry spruce crackle and pop as it burnt to embers.

She thought about those souls that wander the earth, unloved.  Yet in her own life, love abounded.  A wellspring without beginning or end.   And tonight her heart felt like it was radiating right out of her chest.  Humming with the fervor of the universe and humbled by such a noble gift.

Tonight.

On this cold dark night, wet with rain and abandonment, she stared out the window.  And had no words.

Morning Coffee

She said it was the best cup of coffee she'd had since their trip to California.  She'd loved it there.  The wind in her hair from the ocean and the foggy nights filling up all of the space between them.  Dropping temperatures that made them huddle for warmth and appreciate those jeans like it was November, when in fact it was just another July in San Francisco.  The sound of trolley bells outside the hotel window and the hot taste of Thai food still on the tongue.

There is a difference you know between crying and weeping.  She said she'd learned it from personal experience.  And that if you were ever in a position to know the difference yourself, you should take it.  Weeping, she said comes from your soul.  It is like sap that flows from the roots of an ancient tree, moves through you with this fierce gentleness and makes you remember everything good that's befallen you, everything that holds you grounded.  All the people you've loved with your heart wide open.

She said she'd taken chances where others had fallen short, been afraid.  It helped, thinking this way.  Otherwise she was just a ponderous fool.