miles from home, doing the best that we can

i feel as if everywhere i've gone has left a mark on me, as if every wall i've touched or every person i've hugged was covered in wet paint. i am like a canvas, painted red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo-violet with every place i can possibly call home. i have left my heart in so many different places that it's hard to track the pieces down-- it's a connect-the-dots across the globe, across the country, the line that always pulls us up when we think we're sinking.

tonight it hit me for the first time that this is it, this is really goodbye-- well, at least until january. i wish we could attach cans to the end of this imaginary line and whisper our words through them, a too-young connection in a world that is growing too old for us, too fast. if i could go back to the beginning, back to before we knew this was even possible, i wouldn't do it any differently-- even the hard parts, even the bad parts, even the sad parts; because that way, the good parts are that much better.

they say the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but here's my secret: the scattered pieces of my heart only strengthen its durability, and it feels more whole now than it's ever been before.

i let myself in though i know i'm not supposed to

this is how my day goes:

wake up. think of you. eat breakfast. think of you. work out. think of you. shower. think of you. check the phone. think of you. go to work. think of you. it all becomes quite repetitive after a while.

sometimes i get lucky and the phone rings in my favor. it's 10am and i am smiling as the sun seeps through my window and i press the reciever against my ear. when i'm just waking up, you are the best way to start my day.

sometimes i'm not so lucky and i spend all day wasting my phone's battery by checking it so many times. i scowl and ache and fight back stubborn tears that sting my eyes and my cheeks and want to hate you, except i never really could.


today i waited. i waited and waited and took a walk and tried not to check the phone and failed miserably and i ended up sitting by the lake, under a tree that had just bloomed a little too late, my secret spot. i sat there under those red flowers and slapped mosquitoes away from my skin, and i thought as hard as i could, hoping that maybe, just maybe, one of those thoughts would beam out over the horizon and make its way to you.

i turned on the radio to find you on satellite

i am happy here, it's true-- but the ache never goes away.

i feel myself wandering. i drive around in circles, endlessly, going up and down the streets i've known for years. i'm looking for something that i can't find because i know exactly where it is; i just can't get to it.

sometimes i wring my hands and rack my brains in desperation-- i can't deal with the fact that there is nothing i can do that will bring me closer to you. the next time i will see you is so far away; a lone oasis in the drought the next year will bring me. i feel very quiet and small, almost like a child, and i am always holding my breath. i now know what it feels like to be lonely in a crowded room.

i bite my nails to the quick and do everything i can to forget about you, so i don't have to miss you in those times i don't remember. i run and concentrate on the rhythm of my feet hitting the ground, over and over and over. i throw myself into work and it's all carefully calculated walking, turning, lifting, punching numbers and names into a computer. it is a rhythm all of its own, and after a few hours i have a moment to breathe and, oh-- there is your face, swimming up to the front of my memories again.

and so it goes. i stare at the same page in my book, and read the same sentences over and over again. i only recognize the meanings of the words until the third time over, because the first two times all i can think about is you.

my new favorite poem

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
-the best gesture of my brain is less than your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other:then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis
-- e.e. cummings