… time.

 

… all my life I think she’s been in my mind, hidden away in the deepest crevasses of my spirit. From time to time I would remember her, in those moments between heartbeats, between love, and between breathing. She would appear as an image, like a reflection in a mirror where no mirror could be. In splash of light on light, her face shown only to my inner-mind, she was visible yet invisible to thoughts, yet ever-present. Her presence in my life is like a strong wind, carrying with it the promise of greener days, the cold fury of storms, the moist heat of summer rain, the smell of honey-suckle so close you can taste it but yet can’t hold the scent of it. Her touch against my face is the passionate strength of love, the tender embrace of forgiveness, the promise of a baby's tiny, grasping, uncertain probes.

 

   I’ve looked into her eyes in my own mirror, reflected in the dreams I have for myself, behind my shoulder floating somewhere above me watching down with an intense scrutiny and yet with compassion. There was a time when hers were the first lips mine ever parted, the first heartbeat I ever felt beat with passion against my trembling touch, eyes that ever pierced me like javelins sent from the heavens to crack my heart asunder. There were other times, time apart counted in years and in loves and relationships, counted in joys and sorrows, marked again and again with successes and failures of great import and small insignificant consequence. There is yet another time, now, where hers might be the last lips I ever part, the last fires I may ever ignite in another’s eyes.

 

   There was love in the beginning, a love that learned , educated itself; how to feel, how to experience itself and to appreciate itself. Time and years were the lush sunlight, the mountains and hills, where love blossomed like a flower across the land, blooming and dying in its course as all things in nature are to do. This cycle allowed it to flourish farther, wider; to spread its roots deep in places and to falter in the rocky soil of others, moving in a way no one could ever have known. Time brought it back to a new place, to the place where everything was just right, where time was right, love was right, and two people were aligned in such a manner as to make it possible to bloom again.

 

   This isn’t the bloom of Eden, the perfect unblemished ripening of a perfect world and perfect humanity. This love is blessed with a Darwinian heritage, educated in the highest halls of the heavens of the heart and punished in the deepest bowels of hellish despair, seasoned through tribulation and hardship, blessed by occasional reprieve, tempered by tender compassion experienced over the generations of its’ existence, and wise to the ways of self, ego, and ignorant misfortune that plagued its antecedents. It has the heredity to survive, the strength to reach the sun through obscurity and doubt , and the vitality to hold strong its’ roots in the midst of turmoil, storm, and weather.

 

   There is yet another time, a time unwritten and a story yet to be told. I plan to start now…

 

   It’s not often I have reflective moments, but this is one of them. She is special to me.