The Year

You are my once upon a time,

One of two equally matched protagonists,

In my authored story already 365 days in the making.

Around you I feel a soft ease,

A slow calm,

One that mimics the wind on those grey scale evenings when the trees barely ruffle.

One that brings a faint relief of cool as it tip-toes across your neck even without your permission.

One that acts as a reminder,

That you are my once in a lifetime.

Twin flames,

Who re-flame one another’s spirits.

Your ambitions speak to mine like distant echoes.

Whispering quietly,

Whirling haphazardly,

Yet creatively careful,

This has been the story of our destinies playfully meeting,

In a plush aquamarine forest that couches our unique story.

Everything I lack, you help build.

Everything I build, you help strengthen.

Everything I strengthen, you help support.

You are my once upon a time,

My once in a lifetime.

To think that there was a pause,

A page before our book started.

To consider that all that has made us,

Was to prepare us,

To arrive to each other,

Even before we knew each other,

This is quite the cosmic question to ponder.

Is this what it means to believe in fairy tales?

To believe in the make-believe believability of this reality,

This place that houses my once upon a time?

I remember that initial feeling.

So vivid,

So robust and concrete,

As though it were the first among many a numbered days.

My lungs,

Like a balloon,

Swelled slowly, calmly, with new air.

I resisted exhaling,

Wanting to stretch out each moment so far that it hung suspended,

Teeter-tottering in the balance,

Distending out an infinite amount of time.

You gave me this.

This sweet tasting stream of love,

One that rippled rhythmically,

One that filed every inch of my being until I felt ultimate renewal.

The distance was never easy.

It still isn’t.

It’s like this break,

This fissure.

One that sizzles under even the slightest rendering of sunlight.

Choking as it begs to be glued together.

And yet,

I courageously moved beyond comfort,

Audaciously stepping outside of what I knew to explore that of which I know.

That you are,

And have been even before I met you,

My once upon a time,

My once in a lifetime.

To wrap my soul around this deep and lingering knowledge,

This is my truest privilege,

It is the most liberating of freedoms.

For in it is the security of possibilities.

It is here where I learn,

As I inquisitively look back while looking forward,

The true meaning of ever after:

A perpetual renewal of the present;

An evermore celebration of the everlasting;

A brilliant and unending stretch that embodies this (com)passionate love.

You are my once upon a time.

My equally matched protagonist.

In my authored story that is already 365 days in the making,

You are that which has taken me by complete surprise,

That which has inspired my resolute leap into nirvana.

You are my once in a lifetime.

You are the emphatic hue of my ever after.

Beautifully vulnerable,

Mystifying and stunning.

A meticulous embodiment of what I have always closed my eyes in hopes of seeing.

You are what I could only before this dream of. 

What I surreptitiously anticipated.

You are in every truest of senses, 

My sweetest of ever afters.

The Ache Against Infinity

On tippy toes, you approach my coach bus.

Squinting your perfectly rounded hazel eyes for greater clarity,

You bleed the softest of smiles when you finally see my face through tinted windows.

I had been attentively watching you against that deep red panelling.
The way you nervously put your hands in your pockets as you waited,

And how you lightly threw your head back, heartily laughing,
As you took a phone call.

Your neon cargo shorts mirroring your bright personality.

I wanted so badly to break this glass barrier between us,

To transgress it,

To run back into your strong caramel arms,

To feel the rounded curves of your muscles,

And softness of your skin,

To tell you that leaving is something I just can’t do.

Waiting for my difficult departure seems endless,

I cushion the space by remembering staring at your car clock,

6:47pm,

Praying that I could freeze the moment your lips touched mine,

The one where you kissed me with emergency three times in the closest of intervals.

Your fingers touch your rounded lips as you blow me kisses.

Your eyes whisper the softest “I love you baby,”

And it becomes apparent to me that this is the moment I have been dreading,

The moment that I have tried to forstall for days.

I smile even as my sadness rises,

Nodding my head in a single motion,

But the hollowness bubbles,

It wells deep in my chest.

This ache is the hardest.
Knowing that the space between us will grow wider, 
More expanse, 

Its the most unforgiving of pain.

I watch as you walk away slowly,

Never turning back,

And then my single, it seems my only, tear falls.

I wonder, will you pensively think of me as you drive home…

Through those roads decorated by the towering green trees and the amber setting sun?

In the stillness of your car’s silent soundtrack,

Will you become overcome with emotions just as I had driving in our last car ride together?

When you are long out of sight, and the road breaks apart open green fields,

I stare into my faint reflection.

I remember how the hazel in your eyes stretches out and intermingles, and yet remains distinct, from the camoflauge green.
This thought begins to grant a reprieve.

I remember how it feels to lie in your embrace after I’ve cried,

To feel soothed by the rhythm and rise of your breathing, and the warmth of your heat.

How it was only this morning,

That we sat sitting up, 
You with closed eyes and I with my ear directly over your heart,

Trying to commit the rhythm, 
A deep resounding bass,
Of your heartbeat to my memory.

This is what it feels like to love somebody.

To love someone so deeply that even infinity is not enough.

To leave them steals the words from your lips,

It blurs the disorganized chaos in your head,

Draws a stinging pain,

One that is partnered by hyperventilating.

As the coach bus establishes a rocking pace,

And the sound of the rubber wheels hitting pavement fills in the silence,

I remember that night at Durand Eastman beach,

Where my bare feet touched the cool sand for the first time this season.

You sat next to me on that low grey rock for two,
You remember?

Intertwining our fingers,

My head lightly laying against your shoulder.

As you stared into the distance,

Your face was framed by a pink sunset,

And it was here that I came to know that there is nothing more powerful than living in this moment, 
Rather,

In every moment that we create together. 
It is ever powerful to live as though it is the last and only sensibility that matters.

In these endless increments of time,

Our love is what drowns out the ache that only separation yields.

Our love is what enables the beauty that is our interlocked infinity.
This is what I have come to know.
This is what our love has taught me.

Retrospective

I looked down a nearly empty subway car as the doors chimed and quickly closed.
Overwhelmed,
Tucked away in the car's corner,
I began to cry.
Turning to my right,
I watched the flicker of speed,
And we few riders moved through the city's dark tunnel.
Curly ringlets,
A serious reflection,
I stared back as the car emerged from the tunnel to an alleyway of graffiti.
There was safety in this corner,
Safety to engage in a retrospective.
Safety to remember that it was exactly a year ago when life changed.

You sent me a note that morning...wishing me luck.
I was touched that I had even crossed your mind.
That you even remembered me,
Or what I needed,
I was, after all,
A girl you'd never met in the flesh.
I'd spent nearly a year planning this day that would launch,
I thought,
My career.
My friends joked that this day had nothing to do with professional aspirations,
It was love that was at its center.
It was love that would burst onto the scene.
I laughed.
Thinking, naturally, that they'd gotten it all wrong.

As my car pulled into the next station,
The rhythm of the train slowed,
The frames of an empty platform track came into focus.
Solace.
Not from the distress of sadness,
But from the distress of having my my space inhibited.
I wanted to be in the present,
To look backwards,
So that I could be grateful,
So that I could see clearly,
Through this tracking back in the waters of memory,
How the universe planned this puzzle-piece of a path.

I had no idea what would come of our short notes to each other.
I didn't even know what I wanted of them,
But you intrigued me.
I'd spent months writing you,
Only in short phrases.
But that was enough for me.
Enough to feel a spark of a connection.
Something cosmic.
Enough to draw out excitement at every surprise string of words you sent my way.
I spent a few evenings later in my friend's kitchen,
A mojito in hand as I washed fresh mint leaves and poured out sugar for a new ring,
Bragging about you,
About this mystery that desired my attention.
I wanted to draw more from our brief moments.

The train conductor announced my station.
I lept,
Almost loosing my step.
The doors opened,
Almost hesitantly,
And I walked more confidently,
With a pulsing bounce to my step.
Stepping onto the fast-paced escalator,
I gripped the railing.
Letting everyone pass me,
I stayed present-minded.
Closing my eyes,
Feeling a flush of light breeze that rushed through the escalator's corridor.
I let it wisp my curls,
I let it relax me,
I let it dry the last tear that remained on my face.

It was only a year ago that everything changed.
That everything I had been waiting for,
Everything that was powerful and euphoric,
Synchronistic and beautiful,
It was a year ago that this was finally put into motion.
The universe was giving me what I was finally able to embrace.

I passed through the turnstile,
Climbing a second set of stairs,
Pushing through a final set of doors to the ground level.
The evening was clear,
The sky the darkest of black.
I almost forgot where I was.
Thinking only of what my future might look like.
Of where I'd be on this very day,
One year from today.
Retrospective moments,
I thought,
Were blessings weren't they...?
If only we could be patient,
Patient to be in the present.

Free Falling

Love is ...
Fright,
Trailing as incomprehensible whispers.
A multitude of warnings,
Tumbling,
As we inch and shuffle closer to the edge.
A light and cooling wind that carries,
That wisps,
Rather carelessly,
These bodiless thoughts.
A cautionary pounding that creeps and aches,
Winding slowly,
Surging from the center to the edges,
Even in the final moments before the plunge.

Love is ...
Faith,
Committedly leaping into nirvana,
With only,
If even,
A faint guarantee.
Completely free falling,
Fully unaware,
With no preemptive pushing necessary.
An exhilarating rush,
As the footing to regain your balance is pulled out from under.
Stretching,
Recoiling,
Oscillating as the kinetic energy dissipates.
Light-weight and scintillating,
Its freedom materializing as sensation.
It is seeing and feeling with dedication,
Sometimes single-mindedness,
As we venture into the dense unknown.

Love is frightfully scary and faithfully hopeful.
Even faithfully scary and frightfully hopeful.
That is what love is.

Latching On

An excruciatingly slow,
Deeply vast breath to rescue the feeling of security,
Fails.
A trip into a deep bass heartbeat,
Repetitiously echoing,
Booming out to empty softness,
As I close my eyes and take in the stillness as prescription.
Tiptoeing on a tightrope of anxiousness,
Never looking down or out,
Arms extended to centre balance,
Teetering in shoes hardly made stable for this protracted line that connects you and I.
An identified fear in unidentified terrain,
Even as a small voice reminds me that its the things only I say,
You listen to.
A paralyzing disquietude that draws feet's worth of walls.
Years of piling,
Pouring dense concrete,
Enclosing the things I should willingly be able to share.
Even in knowing that the road to repair need only be paved with few words,
I just cannot draw myself to speak.
Staring at this brightly lit orange wall,
Squeezing my eyes tightly to release two slowly spiralling tears,
That of which is poor evidence of the sadness trapped,
Its a sadness that desperately claws shut the door and refuses to escape.
How did we reach this impasse,
This momentous shift,
This juncture where the only solution smells of desperation and fear?
Desperately searching for the latch,
The one that fastens our common understanding,
I take that excruciating slow,
Deeply vast breath again.
A venture so deep into that bass heartbeat,
Echoing,
Booming,
In the stillness credited as prescription.
Tiptoeing, teetering, travelling towards you,
I mute and muffle paralysis,
I laboriously knock out every brick that aligns, rather crookedly,
The wall that separates you and I.
These spiralling tears draw out your empathy,
They help you visualize how difficult it has been to combat the clawing,
The gnawing grind of this silence.
And then that slight momentous shift,
Where confusion and relief lie parallel,
Where skepticism digs a deep well.
Where impasse is past,
And juncture is bridge.
Where the answer is, and always has been, vulnerability.