713
I’ve got a strict 5km radius. It’s not something I make a point of enforcing— it’s more of a habit, or a limit. If you’re not within 5km of me, my ability to keep our connection alive is marginal, at best. I’ve been deeply lucky to meet a dozen or so souls- some that share my blood, and many that don’t- who can hold that distance with me, who forgive me for my coming and going, and for their acceptance, I will always be grateful. They are like distant suns in my life, and my skies would be so dark without them.
If you were, however, within that 5km radius right now, even just for a day or two, you would know that my road is shaping itself after the reaching landscape of the foothills, and the mountains, where I’ve chosen to bury my roots and dreams; I am tasting air a long way from the sea, and it’s virga that soaks my clothes. I’m growing. I’m running. I’m creating.
But there are valleys too. Change I wouldn’t have chosen. Passings I expected- they were hard nonetheless. And losses, so sudden, they barely had a chance to flicker or spark before they were swallowed by the waves around me; lives I could have been living, now gone, with torn ligaments, resignation letters, and cancelled plane tickets.
I have an idea of just how low a valley can go— I haven’t been there, but more than a few times I’ve peeked over the edge into the dark, or been moved by an account of someone who had crawled on their knees until they recognized their hands— and by some grace, which I’ll get to later, I can say that my valleys have not made me, or my hands, any stranger to myself.
A few years ago, I stopped recognizing my own voice when I sang, and while I’m still working to remember that particular language, I’m playing songs now with instruments that look like
garlic, and cream, and 1/2 cup of red wine
paint that stains my crescent finger nails for weeks
and pink laces that don’t need a bass tempo to set a pace for home
I used to write like this all the time, this written language, and there’s something about turning poetry; something about taking something inside of you that you think you know, and dropping it like a stone in the ocean. How deep it falls, how fast. And you’ll reach into that ocean, because the ocean is you, and you’ll feel for where you put that stone, but it’ll have changed now. From its fall, from this depth.
I used to write like this all the time, with this vast love, and what better time to find this language again, as I navigate a new valley, one I will remember as a different sort of dark, but still vast with love. Whether this is for me, or for you, I’m still figuring that part out. But the words, the sounds, the thoughts will be here.
“Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises” • Act III, Scene II, The Tempest
Blue Flower
Erase Yourself
Bones
Running Around
Warm Me, Winter
Ghost in My Life
E.M.M 