It's So Nice

I just read my best friend's blog, and I feel like my heart could explode. She is so beautifully full of good and pure hopes.

I've noticed that somedays I miss myself. That sounds weird and maybe conceited, but sometimes a thing will catch me, stick its hand into my chest and squeeze its bony fist around my heart (like her blog did just now), and this thing will shout a phrase, a brief memory, that I had forgotten to remember. It reminds me of the parts of myself I don't know how to show, the parts of me that have been pushed into shadowed and dusty corners, packed tightly into boxes and locked in storage buildings.

Today I was reminded of what a secret optimist I am, how hopelessly romantic I am, how beautiful the little seemingly-mundane moments in life are. It makes me want to kiss a blade of grass, tell a stranger they have amazing hands, take off all my clothes and admire my perfect flaws before running screaming into the ocean. I want to kiss my best friend's elbows and knees and say "I know I never saw them bleed, so this is for all the time before I knew you, to connect to it."

Mostly, though, I want to say thank you. To my best friend, for reminding me how capable I am of love and hope.

Wander on.

For Shannon, on the Beach of Dewees

We prayed for waves, your flaxen hair

tied back and drenched, but instead

we carried your surfboard back,

heavy as a fisherman's haul through

the shushing breeze. That day, it felt so long ago

when your freckles sat pale against

your cream skin, the sun having crisped it

to cancer-tan perfection.

The day, lusty and young, fell about us--

a dream-like melody recording wrinkles in our skin.

You ran back to the sea, wanted

to show me live sand dollars, their bodies

soft and green in the rising brine. "Hold him," you said,

sliding the hairy creature onto my palm.

He already smelled dead.

Waiting to be bleached by the sun

and collected, maybe by you--

just someone who wanted him remembered,

set to decorate a cabinet or table-top.

This small, ugly soul: a new conversation piece.

But it was you, watching me,

your eyes calling like an endless tide, pulling me out,

catching ocean songs in my chest.