The Ocean

There is nothing in this world but hope:
a threadbare life vest ping-ponged between us.
Hold your breath and hold my hand –
                       [just another small wave crashing through, dear]
– I can breathe well enough for two.

                                       Today I listened to every song you ever gave me,
                                       and tried to conjure nights spent prowling
                                       for whatever came our way
                                       aching lungs from all the smoke
                                       all the talk
                                       all the things we never have to say
                                       (but sometimes do anyway).

What if we can never be free? you ask,
the salt on our lips. fish nibbling our toes.
What if this is all there ever is?

                                        Twenty years ago a man I never met
                                        pressed my soul between the pages of a book
                                        and twenty years later I drank his voice
                                        with cinnamon tea until it became my own.
                                        I would read to you the language
                                        he carved into my bones:
                                        because I love the taste of his words
                                        because he writes between the lines
                                        like you.

We can float here – you and I –
and if the ocean swallows us whole –
well, we’ll still be whole, won’t we?
And the ocean will still be changed.

There's always that one that gets under your skin...

House-sitting for my parents means knocking around a too-big house with just myself, some cats and a dog for company, with the added curious discovery of how ill at ease and oddly reassured a born-and-raised country boy can be plopped back in the middle of nowhere. 

No matter where I've lived, though, it's always the lights that keep me.

There's a man I know who has this way with words so they dig right through your soul. And maybe the real power is he knows when not to use them, so when he does, you can't escape the meaning. 

Every time he does it my typically unflappable self is quite thoroughly flapped and I spend at least a day or so rolling them over my tongue and shifting the weight on my shoulders to see how they feel. Every time I realise too late I didn't say the right thing back. I would worry about that more, except I know for the most part I don't have to, because he knows what the coded statements mean, but just once, I think, he deserves to hear what should be said and not just what my fear produces. 

I've developed this practice of keeping relationships just far enough away I can cut the tethers if the ship starts sinking and just close enough they never know.  Because I leave places (and consequently the people in those places) behind too much and there really are only so many times your heart can break before you start losing pieces. Because once upon a time I was far too trusting and fought with everything I had for all the wrong people. Because I suppose to a certain extent I'm just wired that way. The reasons don't really matter (this is going to be a recurring theme, children: knowing the reason doesn't necessarily fix the problem). The point is: I do. 

Except this one. The man with the words.  He is and probably always will be the most important person in my life. I can't cut him loose. I've tried. He's tried. We always swing right back into orbit, and there's something reassuring about that. The constancy of him as a feature in my life. But the missing... The missing sometimes can be too much. Because I can only listen to him hurt over choppy connections and try to describe the world I'm in with useless language and wonder if we'll ever see each other face to face again. 

The connections are interesting. People. I could say we have x things in common, and y, q and r traits  but that doesn't really explain what draws certain people together, or makes certain relationships survive hurricanes while others crumble at a light breeze. Out of everything in life, relationships are the things that tug me toward the idea of some sort of destiny. 

I know there's that argument that with hindsight you can add significance to even the most insignificant moment, and randomness probabilities and names for things I never remember but all my science-y friends like to throw at me. Half the time I see the world that way, too. The rest of the time, logic and reason just don't seem to cover all the bases. I still think there's a logic behind it all, but don't discount the possibility that it's a logic we haven't discovered, or won't discover, or just can't understand yet. 

All of this from the fact that a man as squeamish with emotions as I am managed the words 'I miss you,' and wrote a poem that punched me in chest, which left me very, very homesick for the closest thing to a home I've got.