I’m sitting here October 8th .. On the porch this morning with my coffee. I have my headphones in and I’m listening to Jesse Cook- Tuesdays child.
The last time I listened to this song.
I was a hundred miles away from home. Up north tucked away in a cabin with three people whom I enjoyed spending more time with than I have ever spent with people in my own circle.
The song holds some nostalgia – a little bit of bitterness and a whole lot of emotion. I can remember being on the porch stained a dark deep brown. Two raw chairs and a table tucked in the corner of the porch nestled close to the tree line. The steps over looked the lake.. And the trees formed a very warming coziness to the cabin. It felt like home to my heart.
I stood there on the porch with Jason. Early morning – 6 am everything asleep still from the night before. The sun peeked through the greenery on the branches … The sound of a mama bird feeding her young in the small birdhouse that stood alone on an old warped pillar of wood to the right of the porch.
He made me the warmest cup of coffee and would bring it out to me as I stood there in silence each morning. Just taking in all of the serenity of nature and I would let it surround me. No words needed to be said. Nothing needed to be done. I could just sit there with the accompaniment of a warm July breeze. The smell of moss and morning peace. The still of the world still berthing around me.
We would stand there on the porch and speak softly to eachother. About life about love about how we ended up here with the chaos of what life is. We would play music and just sit there. Sometimes in the most beautiful silence. Just with eachother and my coffee.
I can remember feeling – oddly at peace .. Awakened from inside the richest depths of my soul. I would focus my gaze on the lake and I would ponder nothing but the moment. I could not cause cease to my wildly beating heart. As if it was a caged bird battering back and forth with excitement .. I had been filled with the purest form of fullness. He would come up behind me and gently kiss my cheek.. And I can remember this intense deep breath fill up in my chest.
I was lost – staggering to find my footing. The entire time spent with him… I fell more in love with him everyday. He was soft and gentle with his words that were woven with deep wisdom. Intelligence lapped of his tongue like waves of ocean on a shore. He spoke with such fervor yet soft like silk. And I would listen like a small child hearing a story for the first time.
I would get wrapped up into the very song in his careless voice .. and I would swim there.. Floating.. Wading back and forth through his thoughts. Each one stroking a chord inside of me that I had never felt before. I would trace the outline of his body.. Tucked underneath his sweatshirt and his lazy basketball shorts. His shoulders broad through his neck.. Down to his arms full in his biceps and very lean down into his forearms.. His hands were gentle and kind.. Speckled by freckles upon freckles.. His chest wide and strong down to his waist.. And his legs — in shape looked good on him.. His eyes tired from the morning soft with a grey bluish green tone. His eyelashes matched his eyebrows soft blonde with tints of red…
His smile was narrow and curving. Set perfectly on his face so when he smiled his eyes crinkled slightly in the corners.. When he would laugh- he would cascade from a slight laugh to a flimsy bellow causing his shoulders to shrink in and his neck to come back- his tilted face at the clouds … Something in the way he laughed would make me laugh.. Seeing him happy — caught in a moment where nothing not even time could stop him from having his laugh… Brought me a joy similar to when I see my son laugh.
The mornings would just stay mornings and the afternoons became evening and evening became dusk dusk became dawn and dawn unfold to morning.. And I soaked every second in like a sponge. Id get buzzed off his presence … By day … By evening id be drunk off his laughter.. Saying his name out loud brings some sort of tickle to my soul.. Clear and lustrous…
I can hear the trees shaking above head… I can hear the lapping of the water in the early lake against the metal pier … I could hear car doors shutting from down across the way.. Echoing off the houses and bouncing back to my ears… I can still smell the stain of smoke from the campfire sitting on a morning breeze… Heightened..
I don’t know if it was me or him. But as I sit here this morning – and he back in California … I can’t help but feel sad that I have lost those moments I had with him. Everything has shifted into some paradigm … That leaves me uneasy and wondering. I miss him with such an intensity. I dream of him most nights… And most of the time my subconscious dreams me back to the cabin on lake puckaway…
Back to the smell of cedar and mossy dews. The smell of coffee filling up the small quaint rooms in the cabin. The sound of cards shuffling on the table in the living room between the hours of 5-9. The scene out of the car window – on our way into town for daily grocery trips.. With one hand out the window and the other laced through his..The smell of clove on my pillow sham.. Burnt wood on my clothes.. The smell of him on my skin..
I sit here now and I can recall that memory and I am hanging on to it with every ounce of strength in me.. Holding on to a notion that maybe — it can go back to that… Fighting the knowing that it probably will never go back to that. And that it will be someone else in the months to come… Fleeting and sprawling like everything else. I’m empty. At a loss. Defeated by the staleness left over from the months before.. It’s cold. And the sun doesn’t come close to warming my fingers. I have suitors but none of them even come close to Jason.
There are no birds chirping..there is no tree line on this porch there is no sound of waves washing up on the pier.. Clove makes me sad now.. And I haven’t smelt smoldering ash since July. I haven’t smiled like I did back in markesan… No one brings me cups of coffee or fills me with their thoughts.
Summer brought me love and then stole it away from me. Right out of my hands… It poured over me and then washed away leaving me cold and shivering.
Nothing I do can replace the feelings that manifested in me those ten days. Nothing I say can bring it back to what it was. And that is the part I am trying to cope with..
I still miss him – but I don’t lead on how much. I try not to cry because I shouldn’t.. I only allow myself sometimes to float back into the nape of that memory and let myself be there in love– with him — with my hand out the window above the horizon of corn fields.. Singing Coldplay at the top of my lungs.. I think for me.. It changed me. Everything that happened in that period of my life changed the very map of my soul. Realigning here and shifting there..
And do I still love him ? In the sincerest form. In the only way I have ever known love. Through him. I have never loved another human the way I loved Jason. And that is the funny thing about love… It can bring you the highest of highs.. And the lowest of lows.. It burns with a vengeance. And then it burns itself down… And slowly burns up all of it’s glory.. Softly and slowly it dies out.. Til there is nothing left but the ring it has burned beneath it… And that burn becomes the memory of the sting —
As I sit here this morning listening to tuesdays child.
wild soul wanderings 