Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Part of my soul thrives in a city, with its concrete borders and the cacophony of street performers. Cities speak my primary language, color and chaos. This, the most familiar part of my heart, is like an abstract painting with slashes of red and blue intersecting haphazardly. I love cities.

In the city, strangers gather in groups and in families. The architecture, the excitement, the risk, all entirely human. The city current pushes us along sidewalks, in and out of shops, across crowded streets. In a city I am part of a collective, sharing air and sight and sound with the crowd. 

I love the crush of humanity, the shared experience and the flavor of a hundred cultures in a single block. In the city, my heart reminds me that I am so human. 

The ocean says something different. It speaks to something I'm less aware of. I find myself reaching for the boundaries, trying to find the edges of my world. There are no edges, the world stretching beyond my vision, beyond my understanding.

By the ocean, we stand alone. I climb the rocks, going to the end of the world I know. This is it, the edge, the furthest I can walk before I leave the most connected parts of land. I squint at the horizon, desperately alone and terribly small. This is bigger than me, I think, and I grieve. 

Behind me, a beach ball rolls across the sand, disconnected from my longing for the deep. The waves lap across my feet, every one changing the shore. Where has this water come from, I think, as the sun beats against my skin, skin I did not create and do not understand. My toes dig into the sand and their impact is immediately erased. 

All around me, the deep blues and long stretches of beige, like the loneliness and the tragedy.  I let the sun heal me, the waves remind me. I listen to the silence and I understand, I am not only human, but more.

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

May is a minefield of memories. Twice, I walked through May with my unborn children and my desperate wish. At the end of May, I laid down my plans, twice. I'm always surprised, every year, by the wave of strain and melancholy that hits me on these memory days.

My heart remembers, my body remembers what my mind forgets.

These early weeks were the golden days, bright spring days with the restless kicking of my sons. Strawberries and sunshine, watching my stomach swell with the very sweetest dream. Later, May would become a fight, a grasping, terrified fight to hold on to what I had. It was a fight I lost, and even with all the redemptive years, new miracles, and personal growth, it will never not be a loss.

I tiptoe through these sweet altars, the places they were, the person I was. Heaven is never more real to me than these days of aching and longing for what I held.

may is the bittersweet
days of birdsong and sunlight
and aching even in the joy
may is treasures lost and found


 
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