If you were a color, you would be every shade of blue. Light blue would symbolize your boyish charm; reflected innocence yet restrained wisdom; one who accepts and believes and welcomes like a child.
You are electric blue– refreshing, eye-catching, standing out among the rest, exciting and fun, and fulfilling of adventure– the kind of blue that never dulls.
You once bought a blue-green cashmere sweater for me to wear for you– extremely soft, insulating, fine and rare– a sophisticated color, the only kind deserving of you.
I would get lost and scared in your crystal blue eyes. I was at your mercy in those moments. There is a thin line between self-control and surrender.
If anything you are mostly like the ocean blue. If the ocean is blue because water absorbs colors in the red part of the light spectrum, you work magic. Effortlessly, you filter one’s perception to see the unseen potential and possibilities of life and the self.
Like the ocean, you are in constant flux. In a wave crest or plunge, you display grace and power, playfully and dangerously. Everything slows down and speeds up all at the same time. You are calm and ravenous, gentle yet swallowing everything whole, much like how you love– all encompassing. You’d have it no other way. Love is vast for you, like an idol. Even a part of me wanted to bow down to what seemed so worthy of worship.
I cannot grasp you, yet you engulf me. For me, it’s an experience– an anticipated euphoria; for you, I am not sure what it is. You remain mysterious, unable to pin down, yet I wouldn’t even think of it being another way. You love your freedom and independence to be and create. I trust you as you make room for my small human frame.
I once thought of you as a Sirius star, but you are vaster, more instrumental. You are the blue black sky that contains all the stars, and even though you might lose one here and there, you hold it all together, like Father God. Though you could be the brightest star in the sky, you are much too large to be contained to a singular number.
You are all encompassing, enveloping, framing– every shade of blue to be desired.
I awaken with my head on a pillow I think is mine. The bed is made underneath me as if I have taken a nap. My hands sweep over the top of the comforter as I support myself into a seated position. My muscles are relaxed, and my face holds no tension.
My eyes wander over at the loft’s edge where the adjacent windows frame white in the adjoining room, and I hear purposeful, small sounds just below me.
Someone is waiting for me. Was I only napping, or have I been sleeping here for a while?
I ascertain someone has been waiting for me. Someone has been waiting for me, and I am not jolted to hurry down because this person never intended to leave. This person understood the importance of my rest. I grin hearing the small sounds of someone who has a purpose outside of me and the patience to wait.
My hand sleeves the banister as I descend the stairwell. Each foot fall is met with need of comfort, protection, security, and warmth, much like a young girl would expect in a home of kind, loving parents.
As I reach the main level, I turn the corner toward the tinkerings, expecting you to be there.
At this moment, we do not touch, but it’s not because there is a lack of affection. Our affection goes beyond that. It is understood, believed, and embraced in each shared smile, glance, and gesture of care to this home, even in the mundane tasks. It is felt in every sound and pause.
You wait for me to come on my own time, when I am ready, and I love you for this because you trust and carry peace within yourself, the kind that is contagious. It’s an aura that fills this house. There is no waiting for the next thing as the world competes in everything. It is just a neutral state of being. Not that everything is perfect in our world but nothing outside of us is running us or our lives. We understand the importance of others in our life and their place in it, but nothing and no one is getting between us. There is no fear of this in the future either. It’s the actualization of total rest, and there is no fear of what’s to come because we realize it’s not momentary rest. It’s inner rest, undisturbed and untainted by any forces known and unknown. It’s the absolute state of knowing and feeling that everything is exactly as it is and will be. There is nothing in mind, spirit, or soul that muddles it.
This peace transcends all understanding. There is no overthinking–overexplaining– because much is understood between us without the use of words. Though our conversations may deal more in the day to day facts of life, there is a lot of understood emotion by observation, much like holding a kaleidoscope for eye’s catch of all colors, shades, and facets of slight changes in tone and grimaces on one’s face, and even in one’s stillness. We know each other as if we have known each other, our souls holding memory.
I wonder if it has always been like this with you. Regardless of having a definite answer, it doesn’t matter. If in your gentleness, even your kindness, I have attacked you with my words or rejected your acts of love toward me, you have not held it against me. You understand it was only fear, not hate, that held me back. And I hold space in the same way for you. We hold no record of wrongs against each other. The world has been harsh to both of us, and we both understand this about the other. Our nurturing love breathes life into our places where there have been little deaths: You’ll know the weight of my deferred dreams, and I’ll know how to find you when you want to hide from the world. This is love, and we’ll never need convincing nor the shoeing away of doubts because we’ll never question if we deserve it or are worthy of it.
One man’s “I just wanted to make you happy” is that man’s own folly! Maybe in my 20’s that might have been a viable assumption. No, no sir! I was never looking for someone to make me happy. After all these years, I know how to do that on my own. I know what God has for me cannot be done alone. To be with someone means I have to find something greater in and of myself, something more useful to this world: Solace. With that, I am healed, and in my healing, I can heal the world.
To my future love:
I need a slow yet ever-burning, passionate love that develops with time and space and presence. If it is forced or too fast, I won’t believe it is genuine. Even though all that would be nice, this will be my reality. When you find me, I may not be all that you envisioned. Be patient with me and listen to the words I say because I don’t speak idle words when it comes to love. Give me time– give us reasonable time– until we become one. It will be worth the wait. I will be your love of a lifetime, I promise; I know this because I know what I feel in my heart. I may not be able to articulate my emotions fully in the moments as they come, but you will know it more readily in my touch, my kiss, my embrace, my vulnerability, and even in my anger lest I lose you. I will know you are the one when you consider my wishes and warnings– when you believe in me.
Thank you ahead of time for loving me well, just like Him.
Written Winter of 2021/ First published 31 December 2021
This fiction/nonfiction piece marks the close of old loves. A new chapter awaits…
As I folded the clean, warm clothes from the dryer, music played through my Bluetooth kitchen speaker. I had selected a random playlist.
The pause came between songs.
Within a couple of piano notes, a few words, and the female vocalist’s timeless sound, I was moved. It was a new song and yet was familiar, like my soul knew it deep down. And like rushing waters, you invaded me: I was filled with overwhelming love; memories of you flooded my mind; and you possessed my soul. Something in me knew you knew, too.
And something about that realization sent me into an uncontrollable cry, anxious to rid myself of these feelings. I wanted to escape them and fast, but it was too much. I was a hostage to my emotions. I hurried through a list in my mind of what I could do to flip the moment to it’s just a song playing in my kitchen and I am good and I am strong and…
It was beyond my strength– too powerful for me. Instead of fighting a battle I wouldn’t win, I resigned myself to the moment fully. I surrendered in hopes that in a few moments, I would go through some exercise where I would recover my emotions, clear my head, and move about my day as normal.
I have never prided myself for being creative, but I have been known to underestimate my imagination. It took me to a place where our footsteps walked together once before. Only once. Why this place, I don’t know. I tried to stop this stream of consciousness; to exorcise you out of my system, I stopped my chore to write what I felt was taking place within me.
***
I’m across the street from a corner of a place I know we’ve been before, together– this lifetime and maybe many others. It’s the outside entrance of a quaint store in an artist town where trinkets are overlaid in fingerprints of friends, lovers, strangers. And I stare, not because I think you’ll be there, but because somehow I know our intertwined souls dwell here like ghosts, timeless and suspended between this world and the next.
The sun shines behind a building somewhere, and traffic carries on like the seconds that run to the next on my watch. I feel its rhythmic beats against the skin near my wrist.
I mourn within because it’s like you died– we died; I know I’ll never have that feeling again… when I was with you.
I linger before I turn away in an act of farewell. I know I cannot stay– that our souls will remain and maybe someone passing by will pick up on a vibe of our love’s past and fall in love on that same street corner. Except for them, they will make it. They will make it and will love each other until life runs out of time.
I sit in this moment. I don’t know what this is. I suppose it doesn’t really matter. All I know is I’m drawn to you and I haven’t even heard your voice in so long, or felt your touch, or sensed your gentleness with me– yet you are with me nonetheless.
There at that store corner.
Here in my kitchen.
Ours is a soul tie, and we cannot be. Not in this life. Those are the saddest words I have had to type today. That in finding you again, you would be the “turning page” to my next chapter in this life. Without you.
Ironically, I thought you would be the one to tell our story, where I never knew I would. For you loved me and I froze. At the time, other stories preoccupied my mind; now you’re the only story I want to tell. If I must.
That’s all I have left: a story.
I will tell the story you’ve long forgotten, I’m sure. Like a specially wrapped gift, it’s been placed in my hands. I know it’s mine as I gladly receive it with both arms open. I embrace it with a grin and am satisfied knowing what’s inside. It is appreciated and in my care. It is mine to guard– to watch over– much like I felt with you.
Can we agree we will meet in the next lifetime where we are both ready? And if we do, if we can, let’s love like another lifetime doesn’t exist– like ours is the last. For when we meet again, our young hearts and old souls will know. We can meet on that store corner, but this time from that day forward, never take your eyes off of me again. Place one hand in mine, and pull me closely, slightly into your body and wrap your other arm around my waist like we might dance and watch me surrender into your body’s frame. You will like me better this time.
I can see us now on that day when we finally meet again. I am in your arms, and as you face forward, you tilt your head down as I turn inward where you feel the brush of my forehead against your jaw. You keep me within your gaze. We hear our breaths for one another, and you listen because that’s how you know I’m taken, completely, with you.
Before I turn away from our store corner, I take one last look.
Next time, my love.
As I walk away, under my breath I half-sing, half-say a verse to myself:
“You have suffered enough
And warred with yourself.
It’s time that you won.”
I know you agree.
Original painting by Lorraine Christie
“Turning Page” by Sydney Rose
“Falling Slowly” by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová
I strolled among books in a place we once shared some moments, and my spirit felt yours among volumes of poetry. Can the energy of you– us– be contained to a place?
I wonder.
And I imagine you are here and without hesitation and in one fluid movement, your forward steps and raised arm reach for me and you place your fingertips on the back of my neck as you gently comb them upward through my hair and you pause looking me in the eyes like you might kiss me but you don’t. Your hand cups the base of my head like one might a small child and we dance to the tune of “Dance Around the Room with Me” like we had done many times before but this song we’ve never heard before and the music turns up at the chorus like it’s our song, forgetting we are in a bookstore. Forgetting we ever parted. Forgetting time.
As we stop dancing, you take one small step back so that we stand face to face with little distance between our arms’ embrace. Your eyes lift mine to hold your gaze and I relax my head in your palm and I know everything’s going to be okay…
“Ma’am? Are you looking for something?”
I’m startled by the salesman as I’ve perused to the front of the bookstore, not remembering how I got there. “No,” I answered with a far away stare as I faced the man but looked through him like he was a ghost.
I hurried through the checkout line and placed my items on the counter. The same salesman made small talk as he checked me out. I nodded and smiled out of politeness but didn’t hear a word he said.
I was sure I’d shed off my grief-stricken heart once I made it outside of the bookstore. I walked the parking lot to my car where the overcast sky with its grey hues mocked me. The world became cruel that day when I realized I was trapped between two dimensions. I was a ghost too, wandering between a dream with and a reality without you.
