Our fear cannot let us oppress each other. I welcome diversity because we are an ecosystem, not a pyramid of rocks. We push and pull and dance around each other’s niches, and let our zones bleed into each other, allowing our differences and similarities to both define and unite us. We learn and grow from our friction. We accept even as we innovate, even as we sharpen our own perceptions, even as you become fiery red and deep, and I a little hummingbird coming to drink your nectar.
See, I don’t deny that life has order, that it has patterns, that there are things that can be said and done and known. I feel the edges of my mind as well as anyone. Aren’t I the one who cut those beings open, and counted and named their insides one by one? Aren’t I the one who looked down the microscope, memorizing organelles and their functions, spending countless nights battling chemical and statistical equations?
And yet, there is a tender place in me for you. There, I have climbed the mountain and seen the view below, and it is whole and beautiful. There, we all mean so much to each other, even as we transcend our mortal roles. There, it doesn’t even matter, because we are children and the pain is short-lived. My shins bruised and my knees scuffed, I’d do it all over again – I’d climb that slippery rock face with you because you asked me to, I’d run barefoot through the tall fields of summer defying snakes, I’d jump from the cliffs into the turquoise sea. None of that really matters, because the world wouldn’t be straightforward the second time round either. Lived from the heart, reality presents itself always as miracle, defying all rules and regulations.
Believe me, there isn’t a framework into which I can place the wildness of my soul, who wanders endlessly dragging my aching heart behind him, who recklessly opens his arms to new ideas, new thoughts and new beginnings, who falls head over heels for people and places, only to walk away from them a little later.
Our fear cannot let us oppress ourselves. I write you this as I sit, smoldering in yearning for that delicious rose I cut from the garden. If I examine it too closely, I might find yellowing spots where the sun has kissed and withered the delicate petals. With the eyes of a lover I see a perfect bloom, so perfect it hurts not to be it, not to feel it from the inside out, not to know the longing with which it draws up water, the thirst with which it holds onto life.
This has always been my biggest downfall: becoming so enchanted by inklings of beauty that I mold myself into absence to accommodate them, to amplify them and ultimately, to selfishly claim them as my own. But we belong to each other and to no one. We grow solely within each other’s light, as each other’s light. This is what I’ve discovered.
When you are gone, I look for you in my desk drawers among dirty pennies and USB sticks. I send you love notes on the wings of dragonflies, and forgive you for dying, for leaving, for kicking me out, for breaking my heart. I understand your silence, but imagine your words in the songs of a mockingbird. And in that silence I remember you are always here, always here.
As people, we will forever disappoint each other and, in that disappointment, unfold our petals to a vaster love yet.
Leave a Reply