I live my life through the words I write
I opened an old notebook
at random
from the stack beside my bed
on the bookshelf.
A notebook of poetry
from three years ago.
The page I turned to
contained words of
feelings
memories
metaphors
and people.
I offered to the page
a wistful smile
for just yesterday
I wrote about the same
feelings
memories
metaphors
and people.
And I thought to myself:
I need to let them go.
I wonder if these poems
would count as letters
or fragments of a letter
to you
to help me process the mistakes
that led to losing you.
Can you believe it?
Can you believe that here
is where we are now
compared to where we were
before,
back then?
After all this time
you returned to my subconscious
drawing the curtains behind my closed eyes
to screen a movie
a movie of us
where we’re back there,
where we knew each other,
but also now, where we don’t.
How did you manage to combine
and intertwine them?
I could touch your skin
I could hear your voice.
You were there, with me,
real.
You were so real
that when the curtains spread
and my eyes opened
I looked around the room for you
hoping to find you
wanting what I realized was a dream
to be reality.
As hours pass today
the touch of your skin
the sound of your voice
and the energy between us
dissipates
until now
where I can hardly remember.
I cannot comprehend how or why
you came to me
but I thank you
and I hope to see you again soon.
You look the same
you sound the same
you act the same
so much remains familiar
and yet
so much has changed.
Spruce trees fill the front yard of my small-town home. Standing dozens of feet tall, they tower over the speckles of bushes and hedges growing close to the ground, but in communion with neighbouring trees who, too, extend tall and looming into the sky. One is blue, the others ‘normal’, or so I’m told. I can see tones of gray-blue in the one they call the ‘blue’ spruce, and perhaps green holds a more dominant position in the color palate of the others.
Regardless of their colours, they grow, they behave, they act in similar ways, as how the world would expect members of a tree family to be. Here, in the spring, once the snow melts away, the ground stands covered in cones and needles. Not that the snow had much opportunity to stand in its own self-assurance, for the needles see to it that the snow quickly and silently melts away wherever they choose to fall, and land. Sneaky are these trees. The cones and needles dirtied the snow like clumps of dirt and sprays of sand all winter long, that is, until they unleashed their power and spell-casted the snow to disappear, almost overnight.
I wonder if I could make something disappear overnight.
Out into the yard I go, nowhere to step but on cones and needles. I cannot see a single blade of grass left free to stand alone. For hours I rake, gathering into piles the cones and needles and clumps of dead grass that could not withstand the ruthlessness of the falling all around them.
The trees know how to let go of what they no longer need. How to let go of what no longer serves them. All winter they engaged in this process, including seasons before, though more subtly, dropping useless cones and needles to the ground. The trees do not need them any longer; why would they let them go otherwise? I assume they let them go for practical purposes, and not based on emotionality. I assume trees to be straightforward beings.
For hours I rake, wondering of the lives of each cone and needle slowly gathering in amongst the prongs of the rake and joining together in a pile. The trees seem to have fully embraced the act of letting go. Glancing up, dozens of feet above me to the very tops of the trees and into the piercing white light of the sun, I see more cones still, hanging on to the branches by their tips. Eventually, they will join others on the ground. For now, they keep hanging on.
The piles grow larger and larger behind my rake, with collections scattered across the lawn. I appreciate just how much new space the trees have created for themselves. I imagine how free they must feel, to sense this space for new opportunities, for new growth.
Glancing up once more to where clusters of cones remain huddled together, I see how those branches droop heavily; lower than the others with no cones to be seen. Bending under the weight of holding on, the tree assumes responsibility for what the cones cannot carry. The cones do not care, for they do not have to hold up their own weight. But the tree does, and continues to do so, sporadically up the tree trunk the farther my eyes travel.
As my eyes travel, I see freedom, I see weightlessness, I see excitement; I see space for the future in the branches swaying with ease. I see heaviness, I see crowdedness, I see comfort in familiarity; I see the past weighing down the present in those branches encumbered by cones.
I see the same, in me.
I see the spaces in my body where I hang on to that which I believe I cannot live without. The memories that pull me back into my past and hold me hostage there. The people I used to know, the people who made me who I am. The people I used to be. The could-haves, the would-haves, and oh, the should-haves. Opportunities lost, chances never taken, words never said aloud to those who needed to hear them most. Voices echoing in my head, telling me what to do; voices that are not my own. Expectations and wishes, pressures and dreams that remain in the same place in which they were born, static.
I also see the spaces in my body where I have, slowly, made space by letting go. I feel the calmness, the weightlessness, the joy in my heart of being at home raking cones and needles on a Thursday morning. I see images of people I have left behind so I could move onward. I see the moments where I chose to dance to the beat of my own heart when people told me I would be best to dance to music they have deemed to be safe and familiar. I see and hear the voices, and the narratives I have committed to re-write and re-record to better suit my ever-evolving nature. I see the constant of change, the necessity of change, and the beauty and demanding presence of uncertainty.
If I were to let go of the cones frantically hanging on to me, digging in their needles tight and strong, I wonder how many would fall. I wonder what would happen to them, once they hit the ground.
I wonder who I could become.
More than anyone else from my past
I think of you.
I wonder where life has taken you,
whether it has pulled or guided you
to wherever you are now.
I wonder how much of your personality
would be exactly the same
as it was ten years ago,
like I remember.
I wonder of all the experiences
you have lived through
and how curious I am, and would be,
to hear about them.
I wonder at what it would be like
to see you again.
I wonder how those first few moments
of our reunion
would be filled.
Would there be tentativeness?
Would there be liberation?
Would there be comfort?
I wonder how those last few moments
of our reunion
would be filled.
Would there be longing?
Would there be satisfaction?
Would there be a strengthened friendship?
More than anyone else from my past
I think of you
and wonder
if you wonder these things about me, too.
Wondering
if we shall ever
cross paths again
leads me to the land of daydreams
where anything is possible.
The spruce tree
stands tall, stands proud
for all it has lived through.
Heat, cold, summers, winters many,
build and strengthen its trunk.
An ongoing cycle of renewal
adorns the grass and ground beneath.
Discarded needles and cones
cover the last remaining blades of grass.
The tree knows
how to let go of what no longer serves,
making space for new,
for the future,
letting go of the past.
I rake and collect the castaways.
I see no point in tallies or counts
for the total would near infinity.
I have needles and cones
to castaway too,
if only I could be as free
as the tree
in doing so.
Can I offer enough forgiveness
to my past self, to you,
to erase the pain, the confusion, the betrayal,
burning from your eyes
into mine, that night?
Your eyes burn into mine, still,
whenever I think of you.
That fire is the first thing I see,
still feel.
If I’m meant to feel that fire forever,
a hard punishment it would be.
Hard, and justified.
Dawning Words 