Silence.

Sitting in silence is so terribly intimate. For those who fear being visible to another soul, the silence burns and words tumble out of their mouths to put out the fire. The words that fall from their mouths are empty, and it destroys the beautiful flames blazing between the two. It is a pity - no, a sin - to disallow this intimacy. I am one of those cowards who fears being seen, who fears being the one without the words to say. I have an arterial of words built under my tongue for any moment where I fear the burning silence. An arterial of words under my tongue, but only a few in my soul.

Days long gone.

I remember you laughing; that uncontrollable laughter that overtakes your body, makes you bend from the waist up and kick you knees out. The laugh that erupts from your chest, high and low at the same time and full of intoxicating and unexpected joy. The laugh that ends with your slow and deep breaths, and wiping your face with your palms and fingertips. The smile that lingers while the laugh fades. I remember it well.

I also remember your carelessness, your ability to run around with a light radiating off of you, that no one had taken and tried to stifle yet. Your heart, worn on your sleeve. You words toppling from your mouth. Your innocence coating your movements, your speech, your thoughts. The decisions you would make in the blink of an eye. The way you exhaled when waiting for the words to come because the silence that lingered bothered you.

Mostly, though, I remember your eyes. They were big and brown and dark in color. Yet they were so bright. Through your eyes shone something unexplainable. Through your eyes shone your heart, not yet broken. Through your eyes shone your soul, so trusting, so young.

Child.

I was a child. I held the world in my hands; the mountains had peaks and the oceans, bottoms. I could speak of love as if I had created it with the same limbs that climbed the mountains, breathed into it with the same lungs that explored the depths - but it never touched me. I believed that the world was filled with marvelous fools who squandered after love and collected its pieces as if it could ever truly be held in their clumsy hands. I was not one of those marvelous fools. Because I was a child, and believed that I could never be harmed. If I was never to be harmed, I would never need love - because I can climb my own mountains, dive into my own oceans.

The first light of love can stab a person with the utmost pain and misery. A gift given but not received lies on its resting place, waiting for the day when the reciever's hands can grasp it and the giver's heart can fully give it over. Once love stabbed me with enough vigor, I accepted it. But I did not look into the giver's eyes.

I held the pieces of love; they were uncomprehendable to me. A new language that I feared to uncover. So I continued to climb my own mountains and swim in my own oceans. I was still boundless - I was not one of those marvelous fools. But I still held love in my hands; I kept it bound to my palms.

And then Love sent a man; some form in which I could understand it. I do not speak of the Christ figure I was educated fully in (but in my heart knew little of). No, I am speaking of a human man. Flesh - as sinful and thin as mine.  A man that sought Love - a man that believed in love. A man sent to give me a tangable understanding of the gift that I had wrapped in my palms, yet to become stale.

This man was sent to me. And then sent away. And I gave him the pieces of what I collected; I gave him the small shards that had begun slicing into my palms because they became too painful for me to bind to my own flesh. I gave him what had slowly become his. I gave him the pieces from my hands, but they had become so embedded in my palms that I had to give him pieces of my own flesh, my own blood, my own being. I had given him the gift that I was given - and my hands were finally empty of the love.

As I gripped the empty air around me, I realized I had become one of the mighty fools that squandered the earth for love. All I had left to show of my successes in collecting the pieces were the wounds still overwhelming my palms, palms which had become of a thicker flesh. The rest of my outer shell had become thicker, more difficult to puncture, as well. I was no longer a child, but a hard, leathery being.

It took me many stumbles and failings before I realized that something was inside of me. The physical pieces that were once embedded in my hands were gone, but had left something to flow through my blood stream and pump through my heart. I stood up from the grimy earth where I squandered for pieces of love, and understood the reason my flesh had begun to grow thicker. It was encompassing the original gift that had been stored within me ever since the giver had handed it to me. He had given me Himself - the gift giver, the being of Love, was inside of me. And my flesh began to thin out, so that I could now be His messenger, like the man was to me. And I no longer believed that I had created the mountain peaks and the ocean bottoms. But He did restore my belief that, with Him, I could never be harmed. I needed Love, for I was His child.

Teeth.

Sometime in May of 2013
 
Why does feeling reside in my teeth?
When I was in danger,
I felt the cold reality in my teeth.
When you told me to "shut up bitch"
I bit down my words,
grinding them between my teeth.
You hit me
and made my entire body shake
but I felt it in my teeth.

Word vomit on anger.

The greatest anger is a direct result of betrayal from someone you love. The question is, why? Notice I did not say that betrayal is a result of someone who loves you betraying you - although anger does result from that. But the act of loving another is so massive because it does not require conditionality for the other party. What do we benefit from loving someone and they not loving us back? At first, it seems harmless - they are our muse, our beautiful thing. They give light to the sun and scent to the flowers. But, at some point, love embraces the hideousness of human nature. And, as ones who love, we are required to open our eyes to those things, and still have a tender spirit towards the one we love. Their shadows darken us, their burdens weigh us down.

What a picture this is for our relationship with God - truly! Think of the shadows He takes on, the burdens He carries for those who do not love him. But I am looking at human love, at the moment. We see God's anger as a result of this, but His grace overwhelms it. What of our anger, then? What happens when we are betrayed by those we love and anger overwhelms our spirit? Is that when we fall out of love?

Or is it a driving force? This is what I believe. The anger from a heartbreak can either detect false love or it can test the one who truly loves. If the individual is angered by betrayal from the one they love and then continues to love them, that is true love. That anger is a brilliantly strong substance created to break us and, if fails, builds us.

We need to be angered, but not allow our spirit to become angry. We need the pang and burn of anger to move us, to shake us. The anger that results from love, then, is so complex. The expectations of the one you love are often grey, because love inhibits our rationality. This is why, I believe, the greatest anger results of betrayal from someone you love. 

A beautiful flaw.

I am a tragic flaw in this beautiful story. I am in complete disbelief that I had not seen it before - the truth is so dry and straight-cut in front of me, I must be a mighty fool to be blind of it. It is true of most people, and those who it is not true of must be of a special make - a special breed - of human. The fear of exposure, and our response to its threat. Because it is in our nature to run, our nature to hide, our nature to not be seen.

When a doe in the wood is seen, it is attacked - the predator gains the power. It is not until it is seen that it is in danger. It is not until it is in that vulnerable position of exposure that it feels the need to run.

I am the cowardly doe - more cowardly than is natural of a doe, even - because I run. I run without hesitation or understanding of why I am running. I run now, but I surely ran years ago.

The realization that had fallen upon me then has now fallen upon me now. And it is taking every ounce of my being to admit it to myself... but this is my fault. Everything that has happened - every bit of heartbreak - has been brought upon by inability to allow myself to be gloriously exposed in the light of love.

And he was ready to drench me in love, not only then, but now. And he tried. He tried then, to show me that I am not a mistake but a beautiful being for him to douse his affections upon. And he has only done the same all these years. And the moment when I realize it, I run. Like a frightened doe.

I do not know if he loves me, but love is exposed through him with every tiring effort he has made to reach me. And I pushed him away. And the part that makes me ill about it all is that I pushed him away in the name of love. Because I was scared of loving him.

And he has not given up on me. He has returned, time and time again, to warm my cold veins with what he has to offer. Expecting nothing in return but for me to not turn completely from his affections; to show him some slight movement or a small set of words that I accept this affection. And all I have done is not only deny it, but deny the truth inside me. And I break him time and time again. And he still does not leave me.

Again, I do not know if he loves me. But what I do know as that he is fully aware of the blatant truth that I am a flaw- an error of nature. And for some reason that I will never understand, he still sees me as a beautiful flaw.

Swing.

At the age of two I discovered swinging. When I was four, I acquired the freedom and physical ability to swing on my own in my backyard. The feeling that one's body gets when it lifts up with the narrow seat that carries them into the heavens was an excruciating craving of mine. I sang as I swung, my lungs bursting forth with air produced by the momentum of my body's movements. I was a scientific miracle; a force of nature. I was flying and singing, like the angels at Jesus' birth.

I started school, and they had the most magnificent swings on our playground. They sat atop the steep grassy hill, course wood chips beneath their shadows. The seats were flexible, and a happy yellow color stained brown from years of dirty tennis shoes belonging to the brave children who stood on them. They hung by torturous chains that pinched your fingers if you grabbed them too tightly, and squeaked as you moved, the pitches ascending and descending with your movements.  When multiple children swung, it sounded beautifully orchestrated, the squeaks bringing a minor air to the piece, the children's joy, major. It was the music of the angels.

When you looked out, you could see the school roof and the rest of the sloping playground. I would stare up at the nearby trees, pretending I was entangled and leaping from the branches. Years later, I discovered if I only looked further, the mountains were generous enough to reveal their peaks over the distant skyline.

One day, in the middle of my elementary school years, I leaned back on the swings too far and came up too fast - the familiar feeling of nausea overtook me. I was upset; this glorious machine had betrayed me, made me fall ill. I interrupted the perfect arc I swung in by dragging my heels and toes into the wood chips. A curious boy on the swing next to me told me that if I closed my eyes when I came up from leaning back, I would not get dizzy - something about inertia; physics I did not understand. I tried it; he was right.

I escaped to these swings on the weekends and summers. There are some days when our tired spirits just need to fly away, and, for me, those days were plenty. At some point in my high school years, I began searching for value and purpose - these swings provided my temporary answer. Because I was flying. My broken and bruised body was lifted by some grand force that I could not even describe or comprehend - it was as if the angels of the swings had given me the wings I needed, if only for a moment.

I took a couple people to these swings to show them the magic that they held. The first was my best friend. She did not like the swings like I did - they made her dizzy and nauseous. I tried to tell her that when I was in elementary school, a curious boy told me that if you closed you eyes when you came up from leaning back, you would not be dizzy. She never tried it.

That curious boy was the second person I brought to the swings, when he was eighteen and I seventeen. He was no longer a boy, but not yet a grown up. But I loved him. We would sit on the swings for hours, holding hands and telling stories, pausing so that we could fly away into the sky together, speechless as the breath tore out of our lungs. 

The curious boy became a man and is no longer mine to hold. But I sometimes go to the swings, anyway, and talk to him, holding out my hand to the ghost he left in my memories. I used to think he ruined the magic of the swings for me, because I can no longer go on them without feeling heartbroken. But then I remember that if I only look a bit further, the mountains peek over the skyline, and if I only go a bit higher, I feel like I am soaring. Even the brokenhearted can still pretend they are angels.

Dark wood.

I walked within the shadows,
through the trees in the dark wood,
with the utmost defiance
for you said I never should.

Whilst my heart beat within me,
my soul and its light did scare,
my heart and I moved forward
for I dreamed I'd find you there.