Playful, warm, understanding, rambling, adventurous, romantic. Explorer of emotions, excavator of deeper meaning. Early morning run, trip to get coffee, a poem I wrote on a fingerprint laptop screen. Yesterday’s T-shirt draped over a chair. Look past the mess and there’s my magic. (I’ll return the favor.) Easy laughter, ready invention. We are all on the same team. There’s room for us. I have your back.
This is who I am at rest, at ease, guards down.
I reread old pages and bear witness to a man in survival mode: Tense, detached, on defense. A lion too prideful to admit he is suffering. Rush from room to room, tip back a drink to try and find joy. This is love, I lie, this is love, this is love, this is love. My patience is short, my jokes have sharp edges. I weep around strangers on a walk to the gym; I swallow my pain in neon rooms. I raise my voice, a mammal backed into a corner and kicked in the ribs. You’ll teach me not to raise my voice. Cruel summer, false lovers. I smile and dance, never lonelier than in these crowded rooms. I lie to my friends about what it’s like to be alone with you. I lie to myself about what it’s like to be alone with you. I never feel rested. I have been hustling and out of breath, in some ways, since the moment you walked through my apartment door.
It’s been months, months, and just now I recognize myself again in the mirror. Those were week and weeks of deliberateness. Deliberate healing, deliberate letting go, deliberate pressing on. My Taurus moon erected cliffside boundaries, shrouded me in blankets, put a vinyl under needle scratch, boxed up an old life and found another.
My plants, whose vines were crisping brown in that old room, now prosper on my windowsill. I study them, and I understand. What a thing to be seen, again, in a new light.
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I wake up to the sound of airplane wheels meeting concrete, and soon I am hugging my friends hello at an airport. We explore red rocks, glide the oars of kayaks through dammed waters, whisk our bikes through mountains. We yell like children, laugh, and pause to drink water. We are young. When we get home, we say nothing, just fall onto couches and floors with blankets and pillows. Bob’s Burgers and no agenda.
Oh. I remember. This is who we are.
I’m too learned in the ways of the world to wish this moment would last forever, so instead I revel in it. As the sun sets on another story, I tuck the lesson into my pocket: Make room for rest, slow things down, find time with your friends that includes no agenda.
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If I had one wish, it would be that all of us could live without having to survive. We are so beautiful when we are at rest, curious and warm, free to create and invent. We are so easy to love.
A friend’s throat catches as he explains there are going to be cuts at his job. He doesn’t know what he’ll do, if the money stops flowing in. His survival, the survival of people he holds close, depends on it. I recognize when his heart is heavy, when his patience grows short, when his gentle hands are quick to become fists. He is surviving so much.
I yearn to control the wheels spinning in his life, to write the story on his behalf, to grant him peace and ease and gentleness. Of course, I can’t do this. I can only offer respite, a moment’s rest. I can only love him, even now, even angry, even afraid.
This is what he, and the other great loves of my life, have done for me. On the mornings I didn’t know how to show up for myself, they showed up anyway. They listened as I lied about the story I was living, waiting patiently for me to find my way back.
We find our way back. Maybe that’s the more realistic wish – that we always find our way back. I will be waiting.
michael king 