Preface of a Great Adventure

        You’re become something very real, very tangible to me. I can’t seem to boil down my words into something concentrated enough to explain it, I just know that you’re not simply a dream floating around in my head anymore. 

You are real. I have felt your arms around me and been encompassed in the warmth of your affection. Your fingers have been entwined in mine as truly as I feel my heart becoming lost in the tumult of this thing called love. 

It’s strange. The best word I can find to describe my feelings about our togetherness is comfortable. Perhaps I’m wrong not to speak to you in terms of passion, longing, and desire. I think those things are true as well, but I have found that the more I spend time with you, the more I realize how right we feel. When we are together, it feels right. It feels comfortable. It’s as if I finally found the thing that I’ve been looking for; I’ve found the glove with the perfect fit and I don’t ever want to let go.

I picture myself in the future and you’re there, standing right beside me. My darling, let’s be adventurers together. Let’s travel the world and let’s worship our God. Let’s share the gospel and let’s love each other. Let’s never be apart. 

I imagine living a simple life with you and I don’t think I could picture anything happier. I don’t ask for much. Just you and me and lasting love. And maybe a baby and a dog sometime down the road... 

I imagine wild adventures and quiet nights. I picture us climbing mountains together and growing old together. It’s a vast collage that I don’t even know if I understand; but it is there, swirling around in the back of my mind like a beautiful silent movie, waiting to be narrated. 

My pen is here, between my fingers, waiting to write our story as it unfolds. And yet, even as I write these words, I feel as if I’ve read them before. I feel as if I the worn pages of my favorite childhood story are coming alive and the sweet aroma of a well-loved book is calling me to jump inside. 

Maybe that’s why you feel so wonderful to me me. Maybe that’s why it’s as if I’ve always know you. Because all along I’ve been reading the story, thinking it was only a fairytale, and here you are. You’re real. I’m real. And this isn’t just a dream.

I think we’ve found the preface of something special. 

Little Silver Cup

Page by page the letters fall,

Are crumpled, smashed, and thrown,

Unto this silver cup I call, 

Tonight I am alone.

Smoking musky words abroad,

Into the evening air,

These embers flay the fuming fraud

Burned up in my despair. 

Consumed by fire, words ignite

The sacrifice is justly made

As tear stained pages fill the night,

Rending hearts, our price is paid.

Within this little cup I pour

Your promises and paper lies,

Purging evil, I’ll ignore

The ashes as they rise.

Page by page, my tribute’s cast

Every letter sets me free.

Look no more on what is past,

But what I intend to be.

Sights and Sounds

There was a siren in the night.

Blood stained asphalt.

 My mother screaming 

“Oh my God.”

While Irene and I 

 Huddled near the shoulder.

“We shouldn’t have run;

I thought we could make it.”

Merry Christmas, everybody.

Hospital lights blinked,

Machines yawned.

I was tired too, but more angry

Than anything else.

I didn’t want to be there.

Not with all the patronizing

Church ladies,

Swarming in with their 

Condolences and flowers.

 
I often wished it had been me,

Me that had been hit,

Me that had almost died.

I wonder if Irene ever felt the same?

I wonder what it was like to watch 

Her mom struggle for two years in recovery?

Irene always said life was hell growing up.

Her mom never really loved her.

I wonder if the accident changed that?

When Irene’s mom got hit, 

My brain told me it was my fault.

That I shouldn’t have yelled “Go!”.

Years later, Irene’s brain told her 

That she likes girls.

And I have always wondered

What those two things have in common.

What if I am the reason Irene

Decided to cross the road?

Just Friends

I didn’t know what to think the first time he asked me. Standing there, trembling in the night’s cold air, I nodded hesitantly. What did I have to lose? It’s not like I’d signed a marriage contract or anything. It was just a date. One night, two friends, and endless possibilities. We’d been close for over a year now; no harm in giving “us” a try. He smiled. 

A week later, curled up on the grass, twigs biting my bare toes, I poured my story out to him. I hugged my knees and let the words rush out. I figured he should know. The safety pins in my pockets, Courtney’s fingers in mine. My head pressed against the cold toilet seat every night after dinner. My naked words just wanted someone to accept them. But he was ashamed. 

Just friends, he said, as if that’s what we weren’t already. Just friends and nothing else. But he meant something more like, your story scares me. Because really “just friends” aren’t friends at all. “Just friends” means, you screwed up and I don’t know how to say it nicely. “Just friends” means I thought you were better. “Just friends” means goodbye.

Pain Letting

As little red rubies sprout from her skin, 

Popping up like weeds from soft, pale, blue veins,

She wishes she could see his face again

And trade each loss for ruby-studded pain.

Her face, stone cold, as she watches her blood;

Daddy would never want Callie to cry

And so she plugs the constant raging flood

With pins and needles, lie upon lie.

The blood, they say, is where all life is found;

She carved a spring of youth upon her wrist.

But in the letting, lost a dearer sound.

Her heart grew quiet, slipped into the mist. 

I promised him I’d live out all his dreams,

But life, I’ve learned, is harder than it seems.

Mattel Model

Darkened hallway, dimly lit

Creaking door, silence split.

Muffled cries, childish pleas

Tear-stained hands, blackened knees.

This was home, now it’s not.

Where I broke, I forgot.

Like my naked dolls I lay;

Here becomes my soul’s display.

Daddy mock me,

Mommy frock me,

Parents play me well.

Those who dress me,

Those who bless me,

Break my naive spell.

My Barbie sits with hollow eyes

With empty chest and matted hair

She beg forgiveness from her lies

And wonders if I care.

The game abandoned long ago

I leave her on the floor,

I’ve learned the secrets big girls know

And I don’t care no more.

Pages from a Memoir

Memories, I imagine, are 

Like musty pages mottled 

By erosion, creeping far

Into the bottled

Recesses of my brain.

The yellowed pages are worn

Thin by joy and pain.

And numbers 28, I’ve sworn

I will never forget. Though,

I’ve found that letters blur.

Memories come and go-

I remember how her

Hand traced my arching spine,

But forget about her smile

And the love I thought was mine.

Each kiss I put on file,

Each hug and promise too,

But returned with empty fingers

My library fee is overdue.

She is a book that lingers,

Leaving little to the mind

Except for the smell of old

Binding. And yet, I find

As each new story does unfold 

A sort of joy in looking back. 

Each dog-eared page, beckoning,

Promises colors painted black

As letters mark my reckoning.

I breath this paradox, paradise,

This worm within a history. 

And find I’m bound by every vice,

By stories who’ve forgotten me.

Am I a book too brown, too marred

Or yet a classic still? 

What price we pay for stories scarred

Without an ending, lifted quill.

Too deep a question; soon forget

The musings of our creed.

Think instead on of how we met: 

A book I’d like to read.