Gypsy Soul

"What is it you think you're waiting for?" a stranger asked me, the other day, eleven minutes past midnight.  An echo of Rachel's voice in a minute hand of a clock.  No one will understand but her, and she'll never know.  She's somewhere else, a text message away, one that will remain "delivered," but never actually reach her.  It's better this way.  Better this way.  I'll nod to that and pretend I believe it.  Most of the time, I actually do.
I'm waiting for something to shake me, I told the stranger. I think, with a degree of knowing, that I'm going to lose my footing, maybe stumble, maybe fall.  These things are coming for me.  Hunting me.  These are all good things.  There may be elation, there might as easily be despair, but there will definitely be inspiration. I think it'll come like one of those storms you're not sure whether it'd be better to dance in or run from, and I think I'll dance.
He told to me to make sure that I did dance, and I added another tally in the column for freedom.

I feel like I'm sitting in a dark, silent room, and the thing is, I'm not brave enough for the words I want to say to fill that silence or to acknowledge to the awareness of others that I am present.  I'm not strong enough for the adventures I want to have, or even to look at them or for the possibility of them.  But, I have become, by some grace, reckless enough to jump as if in order to see what I do when I haven't a choice in the matter.

Coconut coffee and vanilla creamer flavors my tongue and my feet are still tingling and grass stained from mowing the lawn barefoot around two this afternoon.  I feel these things.  I may not feel anything else for a while, but these are tangible.
My mother and I discussed shame this morning as I sipped hazelnut coffee, black, in Ohio and she gulped down her cream and sugar in Georgia.  She hides, she told me, beneath covers, and she hates herself during - or after.  And I love her for the fact that she can at least get farther than I can.  This gives me hope.  I don't understand why we hide from the expression of our physicality.  I do understand.  I don't understand.  I have a tree I'd like to ask, but I don't have the energy to sort through another's thoughts.  Or to sort through why it is I'm so much more distant, now.  He said I'd be a fool if I refused him.  Please don't give me the chance to show you that I am a fool, sweetheart.  If you'd ask, I'd run, and we'd both write.  Let's save the pain for another day, I think we're good for now.  I have plenty on reserve, and he's not a storm.  He's a tree that sways, as if dancing, somewhere else.  I like it that way.

Meanwhile, it's storming in Georgia and my little sister is getting married.
  
Orion has turned twenty-seven, and I make a wish silently that it's a good one, visualizing a juxtaposition of another morning, one with him, over the one I spent alone.  The Tree almost scolds a, "You still actively miss Austin?"  I laugh to myself.  Darling, I couldn't begin to explain it to you.  I miss the man for who he was, apart from me.  I enjoyed him, constantly.  We may not have fit, but I still smile when I picture him dancing in his kitchen or as we folded laundry together in his living room before he'd tackle my dog or give me a smile that would flip my stomach.  I miss him.  The only reason I do not contact him is for the same reason I do not send a message to Rachel and suggest we see each other once more before I leave.  I'm not sure there are adequate words for it.  But, it's better this way.  Yes, that.  I believe it, too, right now.

It all comes back to you.  This isn't for who you think it's for.  Or maybe it is and I'm slow on the uptake.  Regardless, I'm leaving in ten days.