Snowflakes float in whirling dances from a gray sky. Dusting the leaves carpeting the back yard. Silence broken by the electric kettle bubbling in the corner of the counter. Boiling water for a cup of tea that I’ll probably let go cold before I remember I made it.
The question sits on my spine. Gentle and heavy all at once. Where did you go?
I stare out the window at my big tree. I call him Charlie Boy. The thought hits me, that he isn’t mine. I wasn’t here when he was first planted. But I’m here now. I worry about him when the winds are too heavy in the summer. Or just the other day when it buffeted my car on the drive home from work. I worried Charlie Boy might not make it. Because the elder things of the universe I inhabit are precious and lift me with life.
I hold out my hand to the person I was four years ago. I ask her to forgive me for getting lost. She wants to know about it. Where I disappeared to. How I found my way back. I don’t have the heart to tell her I’m still a bit aimless.
Are human beings the only sentient things that yearn? Because sometimes I get so tangled in a web of yearning that I forget to breathe. I yearn to dance like the snowflakes. I want to feel the way the wind blows through my branches, like Charlie Boy.
I am finding pieces I set down along the way. Pieces I deemed not necessary for the misery percolating in my pancreas. How can I be sad if I am smiling all the time? How can I be tragic if I am full of kindness?
I want to see where I go, so I’ll keep walking forward. Hand firmly clasped in my past self’s fingers. She got me here, I won’t let her fall behind. I’m grateful to her. For carrying us this far. But it’s time she got some rest.
salisbury.fake 