Thinking out loud

I still don't know what to say. You said it's not my fault but it doesn't feel that way. I knew coming to see you would be a risk but maybe I didn't think carefully enough about the consequences for both of us. When I asked you told me you were happy most of the time. If I've pulled you away from that - I'm sorry. If we were both free things would be different  - but we're not and maybe head needs to win over heart right now. Time to write is short at the moment but I want you to know that I will always be here for you - as a friend if that's all that's possible right now - and if you were happy last week because of that then I think that's ok. You're allowed to be happy when a friend visits aren't you?

Fairy-tale Logic

Fairy-tale Logic

Fairy tales are full of impossible tasks:
Gather the chin hairs of a man-eating goat,
Or cross a sulphuric lake in a leaky boat,
Select the prince from a row of identical masks,
Tiptoe up to a dragon where it basks
And snatch its bone; count dust specks, mote by mote,
Or learn the phone directory by rote.
Always it’s impossible what someone asks—

You have to fight magic with magic. You have to believe

That you have something impossible up your sleeve,

The language of snakes, perhaps, an invisible cloak,

An army of ants at your beck, or a lethal joke,

The will to do whatever must be done:

Marry a monster. Hand over your firstborn son.

by A.E Stallings

There are no impossible tasks in the fairy tale I imagine us in. I have no need of chin hairs or  dragon bone. I only ask that you believe some things last, that time doesn't diminish or erode. Remember us and the way it used to be. Hear me and know me in the silence of words unspoken and the absence of touch. No masks or invisible cloaks. Just the two of us, vulnerable and brave in that first meeting and again after so much time.

First Love

"...This was a child's love, and yet I clench my eyes
till the pictures return, unfocused at first, then
almost clear, an old film played at a slow speed.
All day I will glimpse it, in windows of changing sky,
in mirrors, my lover's eyes, wherever you are.

And later a star, long dead, here, seems precisely
the size of a tear. Tonight, a love-letter out of a dream
stammers itself in my heart. Such faithfulness.
You smile in my head on the last evening. Unseen
flowers suddenly pierce and sweeten the air."

from "First Love" by Carol Ann Duffy

Again I feel I've said too much, too little, and nothing at all.
It all blurs as tears fall.

First love that all these years later flows back from the past to flood the present.

The sweetest, sharpest thing I have ever known...

What I wanted to tell you

"They stared at each other under the ancient sky with the soft rain and full wet earth. More than anything Ephram wanted to talk to her and tell her things he'd kept locked in the storehouse of his soul. He wanted to talk to her about the way Rupert Shankle's melons split on the vine and how honeysuckle blossoms tasted like sunlight. He wanted to tell her that he had seen a part of the night sky in her eyes and that he knew it because it lived in him as well. He wanted to tell her about the knot corded about his heart and how he needed her to loose the binding."

from "Ruby" by Cynthia Bond

Letters

I will always send you letters,
folding and refolding in a million different ways,
trying to make a snowflake that won't melt in your hand.
Maybe one breezeless day I will word the question right
and your answer will find a way back against the current.

The Art of Paper-Folding

Once upon a time there was a girl shut away in a big old house in the middle of nowhere. For its many rooms and sprawling grounds it was a stifling place. She was never without company but felt lonely and empty in a way she couldn't explain. Until one day a letter came that changed everything.

Released from the envelope it unfolded itself into a boy who laughed at her surprise. "It appears we're to be friends," he said, "but appearances can be deceiving so I thought maybe you should see for yourself!" They became the best of friends after that and were together often as he showed her how to fold to fit into an envelope too and send herself wherever she wanted to go.

Many, many years passed with them folding and unfolding themselves along well-worn creases and familiar lines until the passage of time granted them other more magical ways to be together. But for all their ease, she missed her name in his hand. The art of paper-folding never lost its charm for her and one day soon she will cross an ocean and hope their paperless selves know which way to bend.

(Dear S, for thirty years of friendship - thank you x)

Letter to my Muse

"The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal."
William James

You are nothing like how I imagined my Muse. I thought I'd squashed her flat when I picked this place up off the dry cracked prairie and set it down here. I thought I saw the pointed toes of her silver slippers sticking out from under the planks. Instead I find you standing on the front porch looking very much like an accountant in a crisp blue shirt and polished shoes.
You have followed me here and I'm glad. The place was lonely without you. I didn't realise what was missing until you showed up. I'm even more glad that you are not a cranky witch with a broomstick to poke me in the ribs with. Measure and correctness is much more my thing. Seven words is all it takes, right?