Thou Shall Not...

She said what she wanted to say.  Went where she wanted to go.  Moving unconstrained with airs of simplicity, even though no one understood that.  Few could comprehend her motivations, probably because they were pure or mostly so.  Not everyone can handle freedom, she thought.  Most just want the absence of responsibility.  For freedom you must be willing to stand naked in your life, not letting it matter what the others might say.  She wanted to be and let be.  To embrace that which caught her attention and let go when it no longer served her heart.  She lived all of this with the same ease that the moon turns the tide.

Yet, you remain.  A disruption to the ocean.   She still didn't know how to handle you.  At times wishing you dead, so that the dream of you would be only that.  When she awoke, drenched from wrestling the lover ghost of you, it might bring her to weep but at least it would no longer be the impossible waking hope.

In the light, she could remember who she was, know confidence, walk with purpose.  Not wanting anyone, including you, to know the width and depth of her affection.  When he looked at her, she saw him in equal measures.  Hiding was not possible, their souls instantly, electrically entwined with each encounter.  That smile around his lips, eyes never losing their trace.  Piercing through to the whispers of her unveiled, raw, abandoned self that no one else seemed to see.

It is not easy to dissuade the heart.  God does not care either way.

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.