I woke today with a little bit of soul hanging onto my pillow, grey and burdensome and out of place. My bed felt too big for me, and my room too small. For a moment, with loneliness in the crevice of my heart, and gravity on my throat, I had no strength to rise. I wrote another unspoken monologue on the back of my eyelid, just one more, that will, or maybe would have, changed my life to the brilliant, resilient perfection I expect it to be. But I still seem to be humming when I want to sing, running when I need to lie down, lying still when I should cry out.

I'm watching the leaves fall from the freeway decor, and I'm knowing that the light changes too fast to be caught. It filters through my window, now, and in some theatrical pattern asks me if I should even bother chasing you.

"Choices" by Marilyn Brown

With your jocular words and kisses of amiable warmth, you are like the whisp of a giggle, tickling the end of my nose before fluttering away. I know that I was the one to ask you to leave the heat in the fireplace, and when you touched my face, I knew you understood, perhaps better than I. And the relief was a silver hat with long streamers, tangling us up in our own skin. But in the sunlight, in my sleepy, smiley warmth, you were frozen, and I'm not certain I meant for that to happen. I'm not sure I was ready to be so isolated in my spotlight.

Still, I am the one to return your now-and-then smiles, and I'm the one to play your room temperature games, and if your game pierces my belly with laughter, sends my mind into a fluzzy of whirls and spins, I'll probably kiss you again, with amiable warmth, before my light changes.

We know my light won't ever be a light by which to warm your glistening, throbbing hands, but I may let my face show before we're gone.

A Parent by Any Name | Changing the Light
Hand in the Glove | Dance the Bharata Natyam
C'mon Down, Amelia | Shadows

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