would i go? probably i would. because that's what i do. i do things that don't make sense. because they make sense to me. a bit of breaking in my heart has usually done me good. he will set a stage and let things be wonderful. and we will fight some days. and i will think i want to leave and then he will turn soft and we will enjoy the set he built for my visit. we will enjoy a bit of make believe. make believe things are really this way. and we won't let on that we know it's all fleeting. we will play together and tempt each other and comfort each other and then fall apart from each other again. i will meet his family and i might fall in love with them or them with me. we will raise the stakes a little. me, because it is what i do. he, because he holds out hope that i will take his hand and walk with him. but we will do it because it is what we do. i would do it simply for the purpose of keeping a child in him alive for a little bit longer. enjoying him while its possible in case he ever closes to it. keeping the parts of me he roused again awake. it might sound ridiculous to go, but it's more ridiculous to back down against absurdity when there is life to be gained.

i just begin to deconstruct it and the phone rings and on the other end is a voice i recognize and he says in his australian accent, "it's john". and it's john.

i will try and say what i would say if i could say it..

the root of what you say is right. i believe in it at it's root. it is the extent to which you take those things that begins to do damage. it begins to take away the child in you. it begins to make you calculating. the root is right. and worth all it's worth, which is everything. but i can't undo the extent to which you have learned to believe that you should take those things. and i can't be your partner while you undo those things.

i'll stop there because that's all i want to say. i acknowledge that it is only my perception. i acknowledge that there are things i still do not understand.

he wants me to go there still. it would be excrutiating. and i've been known to do excrutiating things. but i won't back down. i won't go back and forth and i don't mean geographically. i'll take the excrutiating.

if the fine line starts splitting and our dance becomes survival..

i loved an australian and now he is gone. he is not gone. he is gone from my house, gone from my days. he is out of earshot from my words and i from his. slowly i would like to deconstruct the beauty of it all into words. i try to start sometimes but i'm not sure where it started. i'm pretty sure it was before i met him. but even if we start there, what part? when he first saw me but i had not yet seen him? do i talk about the dog i knelt to pat on the porch of the coffee shop. do i mention josef's truck? the bruce springsteen tape that i loved? (yes, i loved a bruce springsteen tape). do i mention the time he kissed me by the yukon river? or the woman who had had too much to drink who saw it before we did?

or do i start where we saw it. when was that? on the ferry, at the shipwrecks, in midnite twilight, in absence, in writing? i suppose it was in all of these places. where it began it's ending i don't care to trace yet. not today. one day.

we wrote back and forth like a long thread of words that are like red wine and things that are rich and to be savoured. and like a circular object might travel across that thread if held at the right angle he simply reached up to grab hold and came to me effortlessly.

his eyes were peaceful. his top lip was perfect. his head was nearly shaved and it took me a moment to recognize him, though i knew him right away. it had been five years. i could feel his eyes on me, his relief. my relief. i could feel how loud the lights in the airport were following his 30 hours of travel. when we pulled up behind my house i felt like he was where he should be. i think he felt it too. it was right for him to have come. relief again.

the dog barked but that doesn't matter. he wore a black shirt and with every passing minute i recognised him more and more. i knew i would have fallen in love with him anyway. i told him once that i would have loved him at fourteen or nineteen or twenty-four. i forgot to mention that i would love him at ninety-four, though i know it to be true.

and we fell into life together. for three weeks we lived a mix of simplicity and intensity. we ate every meal across the table from one another. that is not as small as it seems. not for me. after each meal we just stared at each other. sometimes for a long time. before one of us would make a small satisfied noise and get up to clear our plates.

we went for coffee most days. he taught me about good coffee. the conversation would sometimes get intense. our differences dancing different rythms before us. i don't say 'differences' in the usual sense. we aren't that different. yes, we are, but again, not the way most might mean that. this is only what i believe, but i think our differences were learned. at our best, at our most natural, we are the same. in transition, absorbed in a learned way of life, whether mine or his, differences appeared. they were like spears and they cut me in my throat and in my heart and sometimes my skull would feel the blades bearing down. one time so hard that my body let go to tears leaving me unable to do anything to stop them.

it's true that i wanted those differences to stop showing up in the form of a blade. it's true that i believed that they could. because they were always there and when the blade stayed sheathed those differences were stirring each other. we were reminding each other about the things we had forgotten. they were bringing out the best parts of each other. they were doing the work a thousand blades could not accomplish in a life time. it's just what i think..

though i continued to learn. i had begun to realize that if we were to be together for a lifetime, i would need to learn the things he had been learning. i would need to find a similar path in order to walk with him. not because i needed to, but because he needed me to. and i was willing to walk it with him if it was in my heart to. and i wanted it to be in my heart. i wanted to put my hand in his and just go..

i will pause to say that he was so kind to me. so gentle. he told me once when we first began writing again; "if I was around you, there in Manitoba, it'd be hard not to want to be about you - you know that don't you? I'd want to keep you real safe, out of the cold - I'd want to keep you warm." and he did. he kept me safe. he kept me warm. while he was here, i was taken care of. i'd never even wanted that before. for the first time, it felt right to be taken care of. and i don't mean financially or domestically. just taken care of. a man who would put his hand on my back in the morning and say that he needed to make sure he took care of me properly. a man staring right into me with only love. a man who asked me to mend his sweater and who looked at me when i was done and loved me so much for it even though it was a terrible job. even though i'm not good at mending sweaters. a man who saw light in me. a man who drew light out of me.

his last day with me was perfect. i'm not talented enough to describe it the way it really felt so i will just trust that the reader will take my word for it. it was perfect. and it hurt.

and then he left. i won't speak of his departure because only the young girl who watched could really tell it properly. but i returned home and felt his plane leave ground. i don't want to say more about that. there isn't more to say. i loved him.

i will say more but that's enough for now..

it's been awhile...

it's been awhile since i wrote here. or wrote at all for that matter. i should be careful with that. best to write..

so i'll stay away from how busy work has been and briefly state that i am happy. tired sometimes. overwhelmed some days, though i know not to be. just stuff.

it was nice to spend some time without work this weekend. good to catch up on sleep and nice to sit down before it all starts again and write a bit. like always, when you take a break it's hard to get back in. writing is what i'm referring to, though i'm sure the same applies to work. i must remember to know how to get back in always. it's just that the thoughts hit me when i'm driving down a highway and the mustard seeds are starting to colour the landscape against a sky that might storm or in the city when there is a child doing something magnificant that makes me smile out loud. some days i'm close to a coffee shop and some days i'm not. some days i drive out to the brady landfill just to drive somewhere..

time seems to be passing by quicker than i might like.

i keep writing things that shouldn't make it onto the page and then needing to backspace because they are not important or they are rust from not writing.

off to sleep i go, rust in my wheels..