Shepherd Me, From Death Into Life
She paid for the first round. My teeth quaked.
Love arose.
We spoke slow, wrote often, and divulged little beyond the veil of what each other would understand gracefully.
She wrote to me, everyday that I woke. The way that she writes it. My shepherd.
That's why it happened.
That way, those things. That, burning.
Sought, we had, the idea that the words we wove would whip from our lips, in a tongue that only the other would know.
It was comforting.
At first.
Then not.
All at once.
The acknowledgement I had to the evident was a slow process, in contrast. Painfully such.
It began to brew within me, a desire for a change of scenery. But not on her account, on mine.
This is not something I'm foreign to. The grand disappearing act. This time, however, feels just slightly different. I hear the same call, but from nowhere.
I don't want to leave to get away, or to run from something. I want to feel more free, and new, and the scars on my hands leave marks on the walls where I live, and the sound of the voices is growing to an unbearable deafening.
Scared, is what I am.
She writes, I read, and fall in love.
Between letters, my heart grows weak, and I am left baited by the memory of why I stood in awe at her feet not just a night ago.
Overhearing people who are meeting her for the first time--while they swoon over her exquisiteness--is like being reminded that you're gold medal shouldn't feel so heavy around your neck. You feel bad for a moment. Attempt to appreciate it again. Before eventually falling back into patterns of disdain, and avoidance.
Knowing you love her, makes it all the more difficult.
It's not for lack of loving her, it's a dissolving of your love for yourself.
I do not wish to leave in order to find another.
I wish to enjoy who it is I think I could be.
I love her; this city. And I'm fortunate to call her my home. This stunning coast.
But the call, is coming from elsewhere, and within me there stirs an unease.
Feeling misplaced, is the least ideal situation for anything. Or anyone.
"It's because we see things differently as writers" I read. About needing to go.
I cannot tell if that is comforting or not.
How do I watch the hills pass-by, leaving things in the wake, while needing some things to remain when sanity greets me again, and I return.
There is no straight answer. There is no broken tracks. There is no bruising on my arm. There is no stain on my conscious.
But there might be, one day.
Until we kill again,
Header Image by: Michael MacRae