We are stories that we tell because we can’t help but live,
every day and every way, through our music, our words,
our pictures, our bodies.
All day and long into the night, the universe hears us living loud
as we share our stories spinning around the sun’s fire,
playing songs and writing words,
drawing pictures and dancing to the rhythm of our heartbeats
driving us forward into our future.

In the scheme of things, I am small.
But my problems can’t shake me off their backs,
my to-do list wants a quiet night at home, and
my calendar wishes it had room to breathe.
I’ve always been insane that way, but truthfully
it doesn’t bother me.
Before I go to sleep, my problems are solved,
the to do list gets a rest,
and tomorrow’s calendar may be full, but today’s calendar sighs with relief.
World, your problems have lived the easy life,
but I'm awake now, with a calendar of a lifetime to fill.
Can I help with your to-do list?

You see, I’d forgotten the sound of your voice in the dark
the glint of your eyes, your smile by the fire’s warm light.
A colder fire burned the letters you wrote, every day for months,
letters that I’d read before bed, holding your words in my heart
and whispering my dreams into the pillow as I lay awake,
wishing and afraid.

Sleeping became easier as the fear of losing you
became the reality of losing you.
I couldn’t fear the present, the happening, now.
I could only cry, and the tears sent me to sleep.

Suddenly, I can remember so many reasons why I loved you.
Your hands, the music you made tenderly over your
guitar on a summer’s evening, your voice carrying on the wind,
your zeal for life and laughter, your conversation like mountain springs,
refreshing and flowing down naturally from heaven, and me, a girl becoming a woman, thanking God for this gift, this boy becoming a man.
I had so much to learn.

Memories now, of hanging my hopes on your
shoulders though you could never carry them.
Days were not days but hours and minutes and seconds,
counting until the next time I saw your face.
All that time spent sitting by the mailbox
waiting for letters while wanting more of you.
Wanting and wanting, because it was never enough.
By then, my life was you and you were my life.

There’s a difference between looking and seeing.  
I’ve looked bones in books a million times.
I’ve looked at skulls in horror movies out of the corner of my eyes.
But this year, I saw her.
Yellowed and petite, she stood in the corner of the lab.
A stand cradled her spine, wire bound her together,
her head ornamentally dangled from a string.
Tasked with learning the parts of the body, I touched her hands.
Then I realized:
These are her hands.

The elevator dings, I press the button,
and I ascend from Sanity onto the second floor of Craziness,
where I am free again to walk today and forever into your arms:
a place I purposefully forgot I shouldn't go.

This day always comes.
Frantic searching for you in my life...nothing there.
Desperate wanting to hear your voice...no words.
Very few have the elegance of no regrets.
By the way, the answer is yes.
I miss our minds.

It never gets easier.
Smiling, waving, carefree.
Suddenly, one pair of eyes, and
the hands of Time rewind the tape:
the laughing, dancing, dreaming, sighing,
wishing, hoping, losing hope, then weeping,
weeping because the world was ending
and it wasn’t his fault that he didn’t know.
Just one pair of eyes and it happens again.
Again, again, and again.
It never gets easier.