Hiatus

You said "hiatus" like there was something to tie me to the same place, the same space, the same point in time. Like you can tell a dog "stay." Like there was something worth staying for or coming back to.

I wanted to look around and see the same strange universe you live in so I would know what exactly you were thinking. I wanted to tell you, "I may love you, but I don't love you enough to atrophy." I wanted to believe that you were bipolar, as it seemed to be the only explanation for the abrupt Harvey Dent two-face turn.

Instead, as time passes, so do the reasons, the possibility of explanations, and even the desire to linger. In some places, a "hiatus" is nice-- Maui, the Virgin Islands, Fiji. For others, a break only means that things have now been broken. No traction, no ICU and no splints and bones.

XOXO

Perfect Strangers

I don't know what made me look up just then, so suddenly, like emotional whiplash. Maybe it's just because I'm used to having you around-- you still show up on my radar, a bright blip.

But instead of where you would have come over before, instead, you looked away.

Just like we were perfect strangers.

You're just another handsome guy in a Red Sox cap. I'm just another girl pretentiously reading in the corner. If we were perfect strangers, I may try to catch your eye. I may smile. I may run a hand through my hair so you could better see my face. But after our combined history, I know better.

Just like how, as an imperfect non-stranger, I know your Cassiopeia constellation of moles, and how you smell, the way you take your coffee, and the unmistakable sound of your first signs of smoker's cough. And you know too much about me.

I can't pretend we're perfect strangers, so I pretend to ignore you as you walk slowly by, instead.

XOXO

Tiny Wakes

Dock. Cattails. Dog. House on the hill. Barn. Field. Dock. Cattails. Dog. House on the hill. Barn. Field. Dock.

As my feet make tiny wakes in the still pond water, algae floating in random spots like the ubiquitous Snickers-bars-in-public-pools of urban city kid's youth, I find myself thinking, very hazily, that this is pretty much the life. That right now, right here, this moment in time, spinning in tight circles like a buoyant top with my wet thighs sticking to the black inner-tube, digesting a peppermint stick sundae like the same ones I've been getting since 7th grade, and the gentle splashing sounds of Nora, 10 feet away from me in the pond, rollicking like a young otter in, over, and around her tube, both of us higher than a pair of kites-- that this, this is it. I've stood in the Colosseum; I've been in Carnivale; I've watched freighters and cruise ships sail across the infinite blackness of the night's horizon from the beach as stars fell from the sky overhead. But none of this still compares to being home in Vermont. I would not pass up this feeling of bubbly joy and dizziness as I watch dock, cattails, dog, house on the hill, barn, and field flash before me for another pair of heels; not now, and not ever.

These were the moments I missed the most; the small, the mundane, and the entirely trivial. I missed morning jogs underneath trees with leaves so green and bark so dark from the rain. I missed the noisy buzz and crush of Church Street, and the humidity of packed house parties. I missed the tricky shift from first to second gear; the heavy weight of Saph's head on my chest and damp hemlines from where she breathed onto me. I missed the mountains, and the water, and the storms. My entire 4 months in Florence, we only had one thunderstorm. I missed them just as much as I missed blood-red sunsets over the lake, small psychotic cats, familiar hugs and faces, and buttermilk ranch dressing on Wings Over's honey barbecue boneless wings. Like I said, it was the little things that I wished for. In Italy, I got out of the habit of great big, grand wishes, because I knew upon returning, they would probably remain just that-- wishes, and not reality.

But here, this lounge in a pond-- this was more delicious than any wish I could have come up with, not in my most wild and romantic moment. It beat being spirited away to Bobcat. It beat being met at Logan. It even nearly beat that first American kiss back.

Those 6 things-- dock, cattails, dog, house on the hill, barn, field-- and the feeling of the water lapping at my heels in a way that seemed far too velvet and far to solid to really be water, ushered me back in to my life more surely than anything since the 18th, and I knew it then, that this was not a dream. This was the life that I had left, and the one I had returned to. The simplicity was beautiful, and staggering.

A storm rolled in at around 4:30 in the morning. I woke up to watch it, and went back to sleep with the sound of thunder still crashing in my ears. Some wishes are perfectly harmless and easily answered, after all.

XOXO