Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Smile

With a million miles between us, seeing you smile at me and being able to smile back at you gives me hope that there will be happiness again one day.

Pain

This pain is a cancer.

That line was the skipping record in my brain as I drove away from the airport that awful early July morning of goodbye, leaving my love behind.

The pain felt like a tumor – it was a lump in my throat, my chest that impeded my breathing and left me teetering on the edge of explosion. It felt like a deep, raw wound that would fester and grow and consume me if I didn’t pay it proper attention and care.

Grieving, anguished, sorrowful, brokenhearted, wallowing.

Today the pain feels like a hangover that won’t go away. The kind of hangover you get when you have saturated your body, your blood, your brain with alcohol. The first day you want to die. You cry for your mother and your crimes as you crawl back and forth from the bathroom. Moving beyond that is simply not an option. The second day you’re not as damaged but you are fragile, vulnerable, cautious, aching. I feel like midnight between these days. But there’s no 3rd day relief in sight.

And its a pain that exhausts. And you don't want to feel it and you try to push it down, to think of other things, to avoid it for a few minutes.

But you've already established that this pain is a cancer, and if ignored or even just temporarily set aside, it will boil up uncontrolled. Like 7am on the first hangover day after only getting 2 hours of sleep, you remember you're just at the beginning of the awful part. And there's no option but to let it run its course.

So you hang on for dear life and cry freely. And you know that each tear wept releases a bit of the cancer from inside you. And the same goes for every word you're brave enough to write.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Once Upon a Time

Can ya ma can, fe kadeem ya zaman, there was a little girl who didn't believe in princes. She knew that princes were like the wind, blowing through her curls on a hot summer's day, feeling so joyous, so wonderful, but then they blew on to the next little girl. So she decided to be the wind instead and blew her light and love through the boys she passed.

But then one day she blew smack into a special boy. When she realized she was a prince without a homeland - one he could get to anyway - she married him quickly so he could stay. "It's just to help," she told herself.

As the years passed she grew to love the Homeless Prince and they shared so much. Great joy and great pain were theirs. There was always music and laughter in their kingdom, always delicious meals made with exotic spices.

But she felt a change in the air one day, felt the wind pick up and knew there was a storm coming. Though the Homeless Prince loved her deeply - now more than ever - his wanderlust became unbearable. She knew he would wander again soon.

So she prepared to say goodbye. She left him trinkets to remember her by and spells made of music. And then one day he flew with the wind away from their kingdom and she wished him happily ever afters.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Daughter

There is nothing lovelier than hearing a woman you love and admire and sometimes want to slap (lovingly) say that she wished that you were her daughter. Even if she has had twelve too many drinks, you love hearing that you are the one she wishes she could call hers as you drive her safely home.