This churning won't rest. There are no changing tides, it's always a beautiful full moon. It's so much deeper than surface changes, which wax and wane always, this is something entirely its own, unique in the truest sense. Gears are turning in me that have never worked, or were newly birthed. I'm like a toddler with a new toy, curious and so eager. Gently exploring; fingering every nook, every bend and button, twisting all the knobs and tugging all the ropes.

Over and over and over, how many times can we twirl until the dizziness wins?

It seems like the two of us are the only ones completely ready and willing to lay this thing to sleep. The rest of our life is attached to itself, to the image and the thought of what we pretended we always were.

--

I haven't sat in any sickening still sadness, I haven't retraced any of my old routes. I haven't needed any of my old safe guards, no distractions, no hiding places. I fall straight to sleep and I wake up rested, unworried, ready. I haven't felt a pit stirring in weeks, I think some may have even gotten lost in the shuffle. It's been spring cleaning and shedding and an abundance of soft growing things and smiles. I've got a new compass and a steady guide and together we're charting a course and the conditions are clear.

I'm trying to be cautious, I swear it's true. But all I could come up with is a silent prayer, a lifting from my core to all that's above, and the tone is always thankful, hopeful, desirous, asking; hoping that's enough. I have my usual safety nets in place from before but by now they wouldn't hold the weight of this, everything is everything.

And how is it every time things start to fall apart again, before you even know I need you, you find ways to save my days?

I heard what you said, I've said it to myself and all the other voices of reason have said it in turn.
Be careful, be mindful, be watchful. Be careful careful careful.

I hear, I absorb, I agree and I repeat. Those words stay somewhere on the outskirts of the pools in my heart, whose depths are doubling and tripling each and every time you smile, or your hand touches mine. My mind has a BE CAREFUL banner on display, at every entrance and every exit. The worker ants who live up there and sort and tunnel and connect and move all the feelings into thoughts, all the thoughts into actions, they've all got on BE CAREFUL jerseys, BE CAREFUL baseball caps. But as for me? I'm in that fog right now, the perfect moments of stillness. It isn't clearing or thinning and under that veil I can dance and no one but you sees, no one but you knows where to find me. I can sing out and you'll come, I can even whisper with confidence that this fog doesn't distort or cover, it carries. My hands have memories all their own and each feels naked on their own.. lonely. The rest of my body is a perfectly paved roadway, every turn and rest stop carefully marked in a language I know you alone can read. Just how I want it to be.

And all the other things fade away when you come through the door. There's no room for memory or heartache or the distances that exist or the other things that have been a weight dragging me along the ocean floor. It's like a balloon being set free from a terrible child's grasp, soaring, finally. Tickled by the air and riding the currents, sharing great altitudes with the birds.

Even still my realism is on the forefront of every single thing I do. It's always before my eyes like a parallel universe and through each situation I can see the alternate sides, the what if's. What's missing though is the pessimism, the dreadful waiting I usually do, knowing it's all falling apart at any moment, feeling that I'm riding the river in complete darkness and the falls are just ahead and the roaring tells me I will fall, I will fall. With you I'm not preparing for the fall, I still know somewhere along the river will be rocks and rapids but it's okay.

Somehow it's nothing but okay.

I didn't know my heart could race that way.
As scared as I'm not, I'm about a thousand times more terrified than I've probably ever been.
But it's not horror-movie-terror, it's not world-disaster-terror.
It's the most amazing kind of terror, that makes your knees weak,
it's exciting and mystifying and terrible and the best thing that's happened in a long time.

I can't sort it and label it like with other feelings, it's too soon.
There's still so much to shed, so many things standing in the way.
What were roadblocks are more like a cement fortress and standing beside I am so tiny.
When I've ever felt large, I can't say when or why but I know it's existed in me before, this makes me shiver from the inside out.
Somehow it doesn't seem impossible, even still. I think that comes from you.

If you can keep this up, I can wind my springs and just maybe we'll get out of this.

It really is so much easier to forget when you're busy with something else to start trying to remember.

Sometimes when my feelings are hurting and someone is talking to me and I'm supposed to be talking back instead my eyes wander and I read things, any things conveniently readable and close by so I don't have to squint and I bounce in and out but with you, I'm really trying to stay focused on one line at a time.