want.

To open my windows and doors, 

It is with you. 

To allow in the light. 

To be seen. 

by you.

I want to show you everything in my house. 

To guide your hand over my memories. 

with my hands. 

I want to cloak you in warm blankets,

of love. 

with my arms around. small as they are but sturdy and strong. 

I want to sit you at my table. 

To nourish and care for you, 

For us to feel our deepest joy. 

and heal our deepest pains.

I want to sit quietly in the dark corners, 

and acknowledge the ghosts so they might finally find peace. 

I want to find a soft place to lay down, 

to find rapture in enclosing your skin with mine. 

To show you all of the corners where the little things happen. 

And, 

To push back the tables and chairs 

and allow space for big things to happen.

Ripe.

A spark flies forth.

Tiny.

But very bright.

An apple ripens.

Red streaks, chasing green.

Sweet -

Chasing sour.

Up and around.

Its curves.

Swelling.

With readiness.

Its crunch sharpens.

Its sweetness heightens.

It's juice more tangy by the day.

The sun brushes warm rays upon to its skin.

Just ripe enough.

Just fine enough.

Just smooth enough.

To eat.

Perfect for a bite.

Marks from the teeth.

As the flesh collapses   -  into desire on the tongue.

Saliva spills..

Rushing forth.

Yes.

Another bite.

Insatiable.

Wanting.

More.

Le Reve

Searching.

Finding small pieces everywhere.

In everyone I come to know.

Tripping over reminders.

So that i don't forget;

a dog ear or a scrawled note, a photograph.

A laugh, a cry or a word.

Sometimes sharp.

Pain,

that I remember.

Sometimes sweet.

Joy,

that I also remember.

Sometimes bizarre.

A dream,

that I can't quite remember.

A model on a hill, bereft of trees with only drying barley grass

At dusk,

in the wind,

caught in the fading light.

A gang of hundreds of tiny children on motor bikes,

wearing colourful clothes, speed by us.

Kicking up dust and seeds.

The air moves faster,

and I can't find my camera.

And I'm too far away to be heard.

The wind becomes impatient.

My voice gets lost.

I shout out.

I panic.

I want a capture because,

all i can think is how french you look to me.

And how utterly beautiful.

As in,

breath taking.

It's a surprise to me.

For in my mind's eye I see not a sister,

as expected.

But,

a

stunning

woman.

One I have never seen before.

A girl from another time and place.

One who doesn't belong to me.

Anymore.

Or to the world or to anyone else.

By now I realise that I'm shouting,

she can't hear me,

and I cant find it.

That thing.

That thing I've been looking for.

That thing I need so desperately.

That thing i need to make her beautiful.

To light paint her.

Into existence.

Into life.

Into love.

Into sharing.

Into being.

Into becoming the thing that never will be.

That is now only in my deepest of dreams.

In the depths of my memory.
In our imagination.

Threaded throughout, and within.

Where my voice will not reach.

Where my camera can not reach.

A dream,

to catch the light.

So that I can just look at her for a little while longer.

....Or forever.

A dream,

to capture all the little pieces, that the years have scattered around,

for me to find.

As I go.

gold.

I sit.

Trying with all my might to disseminate the tension in my being. 

should I always expect that something should go wrong?

Purely, 

And if only

 To prevent moments that leave me entirely overcome with frustration?

I sit watching the wings flash high above the clouds,

still soaking in the daylight, 

when down below the night has already fallen.

I should be there already!

I take a deep breath. 

Then I yawn. 

I try to ignore the turbulence inside. 

And out. 

And then wonder if it best ignored or whether to process it is a better idea?

As with every journey we get there. 

Eventually. 

In this very moment I feel quite upset that my plans have been altered. 

But, 

As I have been reminded, 

The reason is gold. 

A treasure beyond belief. 

A treasure that is being nurtured into life as we speak.

A precious little egg. 

New life about to begin... 

A reason that outshines all in the universe.

One that gives me a real reason to forget my fussing.

To bear witness to this marvel is enough.

Whether it happens on time or not. 

Always.

I have never had short hair before.

That identity belonged to someone else.

Someone else to whom I was inextricably linked yet completely opposite to.

Complimentary yes.

But not the same.

She had short hair, a bob.

And I had long waves.

Always.

One day I found myself a little tired of this sense of always.

So I cut those long waves off.

On a whim.

At midnight.

With the scissors from the kitchen drawer.

Afterward it occurred to me that I had always been a somewhat passive decision maker.

I didn't ever necessarily want to have long hair.

It had just always been that way.

Cutting it all off wasn't an attempt to be like her.

Although,

perhaps in some small way,

it was an attempt to be a little more yang.

When I was

Perpetually

So very yin.

That's just the way it was.

And so it stayed that way.

As I looked in the mirror one morning I saw her.

I remembered how both sides of her bob, the pieces that framed her face, swung in the same direction.

One side hooked under her chin.

Whilst the other bounced away from her.

As if it had spent the whole time tucked behind an ear.

How she would stand in the bathroom

At the basin

In front of the mirror.

Trying

And failing

To water both sides down in an attempt to tame them.

And so it was, in that very moment,

Observing my new haircut.

I had a thought that I'd dared not have in the almost 10 years since I saw her last.

As afraid as I had been -

- to live my life in a way that might leave her behind:

She would always be there.

That is was impossible that she could ever be far from my conscience.

That  it doesn't matter at all

with whom, how, when and where my life was being lived,

whether in the sense that she was present,

or the sense that she was absent

I would never fail to be surprised by where she might appear in my thoughts.

She would be there waiting for me to remember her.

Always. 

no mans land.

No one wants to read about the in between,

let alone write about it.

There is a lacking of anything to say.

Or so we believe. 

We revere the places of full ness 

and emptiness. 

As if living doesn't happen anywhere else.

Where true love is ever expansive.

Or hearts bloom with happiness. 

Where emotions are full to the brim and over flowing! 

Or perhaps, 

our hearts are tortured by the loss of something 

or someone. 

We feel violently gutted. 

Stripped bare and denuded.

Or utterly peaceful. 

Lofty with ideas or dreams. 

Or full of hope! 

These places of emotion,

that feel entirely tangible,  

when you are feeling so much of something 

that it might manifest into material being and split our bodies open from the inside out. 

But what happens when you feel empty, 

and there's simply nothing there? 

No feeling. 

No emotion.

No sadness.

Just getting on with the daily routine. 

As you do. 

With two feet on the ground.

One after the other. 

After the other.

After the other. 

This in-between chasm is so wide and so deep, 

that even to holler across its darkness

or it's lightness, 

it can take days 

or weeks 

just to hear the echo. 

And when your voice returns to you - 

it's barely audible. 

Weak and whispery.

More of a reminder than anything else.

Maybe it's not lightness or darkness that the echo is fighting it's way through - 

 but sludge.

A cloud. 

A certain shade of greige. 

It has no colour, and no clarity.

Lacking in reflectivity or luminosity of any kind. 

I feels a lacking 

but there is much happening in this no mans land. 

Every mans land.

We've all been there, 

and without it, where might we be? 

The critical space between the decomposition of something old - 

and the regeneration of something new. 

It has a viscosity. 

a humidity.

It could be stormy - or it could be calm. 

A compost heap of life experience. 

Where the egg shells, coffee grounds and the apple cores of before

become the nutrients of after.   

It turns the discarded matter from all life past into fertile soil for tomorrow. 

It seems that I am here 

in this rift of in between nothingness, 

because what is needed the most

 is the space for those ideas

and those dreams,

of that life lived before

to shift its molecules into their most potent formation.

The fuel of forward motion is brewing. 

Like fossil fuels and diamonds - 

that were once dragons, dinosaurs and flowers on earth many millennia ago.

So perhaps the interim, 

is more like the compression that turns coal into diamonds. 

I do like the sound of that better. 

Who doesn't want to be a diamond? 

But then who doesn't want to be the eggshell? 

To be in the state of eternal potential. 

To be the excitement of motion, 

of change that is on it's way. 

And change that is happening in every single moment! 

To be in the journey of life!

Afterall -

a diamond is as a diamond will be.

beautiful yes.

but everchanging it is not.

* * * * *

I'm certain there is some part of an egg shell in there somewhere. 

A part that is strong but also brittle. 

Opposite ends of the spectrum and everything in between.

heart strings.

It seems that my strings are tangled. 

All of them.

Bewildered.

Distracted.

Mindlessly knotted around each other. 

Wrenching tighter and tighter,

Competing for the space to extend themselves.

A tin of worms.

So convoluted that there is no possible way of telling where one ends and another begins. 

Exhausted by the tangle, 

it appears impossible straighten them all out.

Who would know how many strings there are?

Or,

maybe it is just one very very long string?

With it's two ends hidden in the centre.

There are emotion strings.

And strings of ideas.

Runaway trains of thought.

Creative threads.

Aspiration strings.

Logical, rational strings. 

Strings of expectation.

Strings of dreaming.

Strings of love.

Heart strings.

All pulsing about one another. 

When external happenings are stable, 

the knot relaxes. 

And when not, 

the knot is tense.

Fragile.

Manipulated by the goblins,

who hide in the shadow of every mind. 

The experts of lightplay and shadow puppetry.

The mountains seem bigger, 

and the snarling louder.

All tasks unconquerable.

Even the dishes in the sink are an everest.

This knot,

Is tightest around the heart string.

It may be protection.

It may be sabotage.

But the strings of the heart, 

 are like silk.

Stronger than steel and beyond luminous.

With the integrity of the heart strings, I will find myself.

I shall bridge the abyss.

Between the place I am now,

and the place I wish so desperately to be.

Through all weather, they are the straightest strings of them all. 

Guiding through the vicissitudes,

of emotional weather.

Of creative persuits. 

Of balancing life.

Staying true though the tempest.

They are strength and certainty during times that are not.

Radiating true.

Catching beams of light, and bouncing them around the place.

Like a cat playing with a moth.

The heart strings are gleefully unaware of their brilliance,

bouncing into the eyes of the goblins. 

Incandescence making fools of them.