Coming Home

Thin strips of curdled orange hang on the horizon, intersected by the spindly fingers of leafless tree limbs. Shadows scurry after the setting sun, fleeing the thick black clouds to the east and it reminds me of humanity. Brief, fleeting, triumphant in the face of annihilation.
I unlock my truck and get in; the vinyl seats are a tangible reminder of winter’s lingering hold. I turn the key and the engine whirs and the radio comes to life. I drive four point seven miles - three lights, four exits, five more lights, a stop sign - and I’m home. The windows are all dark, the last remnants of orange gone. The heavy wave of night has fallen.

A love note perhaps?

I'll admit it, I got nervous when I saw her. I thought about her when I fell asleep last night. The woman that I've known for months but have never breathed the same air. She was a voice on the telephone, a sentence in an e-mail, a small, blond woman in another person's photos. But she was coming, already here for all I knew. Perhaps her plane had touched down in the midnight hours, the rubber of the tires squelching against the black tarmac, her thoughts going to me.

I doubt it - the most burning love is often unrequited.

I'd just gotten up from my desk and walked toward the coffee room when she appeared. Actually, I saw her companion first, someone I'd met months before. Butterflies swarmed in my stomach. I tried not to let my eyes dart away and search for the person I'd fallen asleep thinking about. I caught sight of her in my peripheral.. My eyes held to the wall until I hugged my friend and then I turned.

She looked different than her photos. More real, more of a woman. We hugged, I muttered, "Nice to meet you," and it was over. Our first contact. In my nervousness, my spooked movements, I didn't even catch a scent of her hair. I think back on it now and try to remember - was it floral, mint, something exotic, something common?

Throughout the day I snuck quick, furtive glances at her. In an attempt to avoid suspicion, I made sure to look at others in the room, bestowing on each my apparent attention. But always she was there, a smudge on my peripheral. When she spoke, I watched her lips moving over her teeth, twisting in a smirk, rising in a smile. I imagined myself knowing those lips, tasting them. Thin creases lined her eyes, like cracks in porcelain. They held a beauty that I cannot even attempt to put into words. A beauty that speaks of a life lived.

I'll never tell her any of this; never tell anyone for that matter. But today I fell in love, as I do most days. Tonight I will think of her again, looking forward to the next time I see her. The next hug, I'll make sure to smell, to let the mysterious scent of her wash over me.

And the memory will sit like a flower in vase, flourishing in the sunlight of a not-so-spotless mind.

Easter Thoughts

I suppose anyone has regrets. Can you really go through life without them? To be free of regrets is to either have an enviable outlook on life grounded in the existential absence of moral value or to have lived in such a timid, removed way as to done nothing of note.

That being said, I don't know if I could pinpoint any exact regret. There is no single moment where I wish I had done it differently; vague notions of turns made, steps taken that have led me down entirely different avenues, leaving me nostalgic for old paths and remembered companions.

When I attempt to truly inspect life and my own influence on it, I picture a road. Most likely I'm merely adapting the symbol most religions use - a road, a path, some sort of avenue upon which one travels. The straight and narrow. Except my life as I see it, is upon an unpaved road, perhaps just a game path. Parts of the path are completely windblown, lost to dust and the inevitable creep of nature. Parts of the path are paved with clear, precise lines, painted, obvious indications of expected behavior. The path changes as inevitably as life must. Throughout the length of the path, other equally mysterious tributaries branch off, limbs of a tree careening away from the trunk. And without conscience thought, these are taken, and a new road looms, the same one I've always trod down but life-changing different.

Upon each path, I meet fellow sojourners. Each is on their own journey. Often I will come into contact with a similar burning soul, one who speaks back in an unknowable, untranslatable language. Perhaps hatred ensues, or love, or envy, or friendship. The human exchange of emotion and experience. Briefly we travel together, paths running parallel, steps falling in unison. Irrevocably the road diverges, a turn calls out and I must take it or sacrifice my own journey in return for theirs - or more optimistically, begin a new, shared journey.

Perhaps this is love.

Unsure of where I'm going with this except that it's what's on my mind. An open keyboard and a willingness to write usually brings out these melancholy and meandering thoughts. I've also noticed I'm a chronic over-user of alliteration.

Regardless, the night finds me drinking chamomile tea in the hopes that it will counteract the cup of coffee I finished an hour earlier, the sounds of Ryan Adams flit through the laptop's speakers, and innumerable pages wait to be read. Be well.