Reasons Why I Still Believe

Years before you swept through my life

I went to this sacred place

where the moonlight on the water

made me feel so alive.

Moonlight.  Sunrise. 

Afternoon delight

on a quilt near the splash of the bank

and when the wind murmured in the tree tops

the promises it spoke of the future

were filled with hope.

Now many scars later I stand

in that very spot

and ache for the love

that slipped away.

I rode above the water today

near fishermen and bathing beauties

and I tried to hard to remember

another sunny lake

when you were breathing down my neck

and narrating every dream

that passed through my

nighttime eyes.

I always say too much.  One joke too many.  One sarcastic remark over the line.  One feeler thrown out there that shouldn’t have been.  Can’t just keep it in my head.  Always have to know, have to ask, have to say it.  And then I stand here like this wondering why I do it.  Oh well, it’s just me.  I’m harmless.  I used to apologize for myself all the time, but I have come to see that I’m not sorry for being me.  I love me.  I make people laugh and I help the underdog and I listen with an open heart and I make people defend their stances.  I send cards to friends when they least expect them and I tell strangers that that color really compliments their complexion.  I remind my children to say “yes ma’am” without being a jerk about it and I don’t mind it if they forget sometimes.  I do all the voices when I read aloud.  I won’t cut in front of you.  I won’t carelessly whack your vehicle with the door of mine.  I’ll pet your dog if he wants to be petted.  I’m not an evil person. I’ve made mistakes.  I’ve been an idiot, but my heart is good.  It’s this rare garden that people always smile for when they first take it in.  Sure there are the sarcastic thorns and the never-know-when-to-shut-up vines that tangle around our feet.  But the colors are vibrant and the breeze blows so softly through here on summer afternoons.  I wish you’d come and sit with me just once, just so I could know what yours is like too.

“I wanna ask you about something,” the shifty uncle said.  He had the nervous hands of a liar, always needing to be busy.  He shuffled a deck of cards in them now, pausing in the hallway of a home where he felt out of place.  The laughter from the main room traveled throughout the apartment, bouncing off designer fabrics and Italian leather and the many souvenirs of a well worn passport and a fat wallet.  But the uncle, looking very much like a preacher without a gig, was awkward as he joined in on the lighthearted scene.

Famous hands and an often hidden face waited without a word.  Maybe there was a sigh or an internal rolling of the eyes, but he paused when he was summoned and he waited to see just what it might be now.  There was a ballgame and a plate of food waiting in the next room.

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how delicate like feathers

this shattered heart of mine

so strong before it broke

and now the genuine

thrill of being loved

is just a laugh during a game

someone interrupted dinner

and dared to speak my name.

I drove down country roads

singing with a smile on my stupid face

when you loved me.

Everyone got the door held open for them

men, women, children.

I would only have to think of you

and everything was in motion.

The future and all the steps it took to get there

and the dragons we would slay together.

I was so ready to storm the gates of hell

when you loved me.

No limits.  No holding back.

Sometimes it was a pot boiling over,

something that could not be contained.

Sometimes I lured you out onto a limb

and sometimes we just sat in the same room

in seething, serious silence.

My blood work came back normal

and all the tests were good when you loved me.

I was at my peak.

Summer days bleed into fall

and things changed

but there was one last dance.

There was one more day in the kitchen

planning what we’d do with a garden

and a lifetime full of Saturday nights.

There was one more

last first kiss

when you loved me.