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May 2016 · 1.4k
Lost and Not Found
A May 2016
What does it mean to lose?

What does it mean to be stripped down to your core and stand, yielding, for the entire world to judge?

I sit alone, among snowy abundance and beauty so severe, that the very thought of countering it is laughable. The sky is poised with such excellence, whilst all around me, the birds display their intentions through a chorus of chirps and chatters, and yet, somehow – all is still. I ponder the idea of loss.

And wonder if, in this noble cycle, anything is really lost at all...
May 2016 · 2.6k
The Day Lucien Died
A May 2016
When we began to love each other, in my mind, I saw a room. The bedroom of an old farm house; windows open, and soft, pale, green curtains moved lazily about the sills. Light of late afternoon slipped in, whilst a faint, blue summer sky waited outside. The door to the hallway is open; the rest of the house - still. A bed is the only piece furniture in a room with wood floors and white walls. There are only sheets on the bed, old cotton sheets, heavy, limp, and cool. This room was our togetherness. Since he died, I am not in the room, and light in it is cooler. It is evening and no one is home.

I am waiting at the door of the story with peaches in my hands. The door is shut, and the peaches are unripe. None of their warmth and sweetness can be smelled, their fuzz clings to them like tight new skin. When we wait patiently for things to open, we stay with them and be, and they ripen, and the door opens. I wait for the peaches and the door as they wait for me. A story through that door will show me and harm me, it is with peaches I may come through.

I was a small child when my mother told me a story of peaches. When I remember it, I remember the peach tree across from our old house. Short and squat, with shining, skinny leaves; the tree crouched in the rose garden. My mother told me about the peace and bliss of heaven, and that when we went there we became angels. She told me that angels longed for the earth sometimes, and have bodies, because angels cannot taste peaches.

When I taste and smell peaches now, I try to give myself over to them, to live and feel the taste of them, to not take them lightly, to not keep them foreign. The day that he died, I found a nectarine in the kitchen, and carried it with me, praying to it to keep me in the world of life, to remind me that moments of peaches are worth the pain of aliveness.

Every story starts with the breaking off an indefinite number of things that have come before. To try and tell the story of Lucien from the beginning, means I will omit the stories of before, the peripheral stories which came before and bled into his, like color on wet paper.

I suppose there are so many ways of telling a story. Not one will be perfect, but each is a prayer. Can you feel this? Can I make something? Are our lives commensurable? Do my words mean what your words mean? We shall see.

This story, too, is a prayer.

A prayer for a new house, a new tree, and a new beginning.
A May 2016
Soft hands
Traced my skin
As I told you
"Pull up your grades, ******* it."

And you replied, sweetly
"Pull up your shirt, ******* it."

Your luscious green eyes
Pouring into mine.
And that was how it was.

My love - your lust.
Woodchips

— The End —