I cannot look at the ocean through a window without wanting to touch it. I have always felt restless by the sea. It is the same way in this field. As I stare across the low land to the mountains that smack the sky, I want to lace up my tired shoes and run to the sun. The windows flood the day inside and my feverish head convinces my spine to stretch. The soup warms my belly and I wish to feel my body firm against fresh clothes. Instead I crawl under clean sheets and imagine it all washing over me anyway, in dreams. 

There is a theme this year already and I don’t know if I’m brave enough to understand that I am brave enough just yet.  I listen the the wind howl and an audiobook talks of morals. I wonder about the origins of the word Loss and think of the French name, Toulouse. I sip ginger bone broth and pad around the red cement floors, wondering which new drawer to fold my new identity into. I gaze across the gold fields at every hour these days and the skyline shifts but the mountains stand firm. Perhaps the dog understands why we’re here. Perhaps he even knows where we’re going, which is how he sleeps so gratefully. 

I tuck my shaky limbs under heavy blankets and imagine that if these walls ripped apart I’d be alone in this big white bed, this big golden field, still safe. Still whole. 

/She said losing love is like a window in your heart/everybody sees you’re blown apart/

The things I whisper aloud in the liminal dawn is kept close and the music finds me still on the long highways between obligations. I watch my face in all the mirrors, hoping that behind the familiar eyes there will be familiar comfort in change. I read of woolgathering and remember that to observe it all is always the only task.

To accept the new lonely for what it offers, to bow and gracefully heave it along through my new days, 

There might lie the theme.

So much. 

I find myself whispering those words in the small morning in half-awake dream before the world hears.

I don’t yet understand if it is something I’m asking for, or if offering as a gift. 

So much. 

I remember to lean in more and more lately. Remembering how it felt as a child to dive off a jetty. Remembering the thrill of tubing too fast over concrete waves and the blue smack of the water, of release. 

I think of all the hurt. I think of him in the bed, aching and hating. I think of all the things I could do, I could say, to be comfort; salve to his wounds. But perhaps I know so much more than before, that to do so would be to pull from a very foundation. To squeeze a hurt only keeps it from shifting. I do not yet know how to fix a broken bone. Nor a broken heart. The only truth I keep remembering is that you can only go forward with your love. There is only so much in salve. That it’s okay to need more. 

so much.

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