Coming home

The days have leaned against each other. I’ve made new friends and held the old. told stories warmed inside the years of holding them against my bones and blood and lungs. It’s nice to give them air again. We danced in deep blue dresses. I wore my pink cowboy boots. beer spilled, cowbells played. The band let us sing with them, the 6 of us standing behind the microphone and screaming brown-eyed girl while white lights swayed above us. This was a beautiful wedding and I loved sitting at the head table being a part of it, a part of something special, a part of love and family. I saw a little girl in a pink dress looking to all of us, remembering being her age and looking to those who seemed so old when I was so small. And we were the oldest at the table this time. This is our time. Our age. What did that little girl see in us? A dream of something far off?

I’m leaving tomorrow morning. We are watching zombie movies and feeling fall blow into town. Outside the clouds are bruised with rain, but keep moving. The mountains curve like women with secrets. I feel my chest open here. I feel full. But there’s always a tug inside me. Especially when I don’t give my voice time to speak and listen and hear the world around me. The small bits that pass so many of us by. Ground coffee. I’ve been drinking a lot of coffee to stay awake. And I find that the less I write the more I depend on others to fill what’s missing, to fill that need I normally find in myself with writing. And it scares me sometimes to need others the way that people tend to need. What is a healthy need? I worry that need is a middle step to obsession. What if one day my need pulls me too far? But then I remember that every day is new and different and sleep somehow resets most feelings of the day. Sleep is a state of balance and I have found myself very sleepy these past few days.

To coming home and molding back into life’s dough. What will I see differently when I come home again? What will I know for sure and know I want to change? I know I want my loves back. That much is clear.