[20 June 2019]
On the wake of tomorrow, the sea holds its breath, waiting.
The sky wraps warm around us, stretching just beyond the horizon. I feel your heartbeat through your palm. I feel your heart through your silence.
Once more around the bend we go, once more into the brave and wild unknown: each step a knell, each moment, its fullest.
My hand sweats, my throat tightens, clenches, closes up.
Flood rising, blood rising, moon rising.
Once more, I see the wind and the waves.
Once more, I turn away.
I pause, clear my throat. Trying to find something to say, trying to ward off the wind and the waves with words, hoping to keep dreams afloat with distraction.
Yet here, in the long silence, the eternal moment – this is where I see you, when I see you for the first time: the same fire that burns within my chest burns within your eyes, pulling you towards a horizon only you can see.
We shore our lives against our own demise, frantically throwing together pieces and fragments and fragments of pieces, desperately constructing something that can withstand the battering of time and weather and chance and change. But still the waves break in, laughing at the flimsy cobble-shod we’ve created, taking away everything we’ve known, everyone we’ve known ourselves to be, washing away the layers and barriers and walls we built to make meaning for ourselves.
Tomorrow is for the damning of the beautiful and the salvation of the damned.
But tomorrow is not yet.
Here, in the crucible of the dawn, dreams are still forged – dreams that hold back the night. It is here that I feel your weight against my skin. It is here I feel your beard on my face. It is here I have seen your face. It is here I have spoken your name. It is here we have seen face to face.
Once more, we call out – one to another. Once more, we dream the same dream. Once more, we plunge into the waves.
I look at you, gazing into the deepnesses, mapping the lines on your face, memorising the knowns, calling out to the unknowns.
Your lips quiver. I feel your hand in mine. Your hand is warm.
Time creeps forward against all my protestations and forces my surrender.
I surrender.
Once more we have given ourselves over to the sea. Once more we bow before the parapets of time. Once more around the bend we go, once more into the brave and wild unknown.
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This post was reblogged at
Life Lessons From Around the Dinner Table
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