I sit, in thunderstorms that bring back new memories, and write of love. But what love, where, how, can heal this time? Is it even love I so desperately want to slide inside of, or youth, or you and your bear arms, the promise you made to meet my young. Some kind of comfort that knows no road; that is barred and barriered, no matter how hard I throw myself at it, beg its opening of our skies.
In thunderstorms, I remember curling at the bottom of your bed, a shaken puppy, so protected that wet would curdle my skin, make me pull back as if bruised or broken, bent by a slivered sun.
At times, you, or Hannah, would drag me out into the rain, or then the boy I loved with each small part of my heart; and there, shivering, shuddering, I was only afraid of the cold.
Which is strange, as now no cold touches me, not inside. No rain makes a racket that I cannot laugh at, shed as sheep skin, leave behind. No, no rain, no love can numb this fire, so alive and so hurting when all I need is gone.
I try not to think of you now, which makes me guilty. Because even a small thought, of our bunny fur trip north, of a pelican or a big, uncooked burger; of small tips at restaurants, those tiny fish with beedy, broken eyes. They undo me in a way that leaves not shaking or crying but a stillness, motionless, the inability to feel for anything or anyone else. The inability to look beyond the roses, mounted in their glory, in their moments of blooming and never decline.
Which makes me afraid. For I know, that despite its own deficiencies, despite my need for you, it is only love that softens these small falls, whether my romance or my nephew and his new top teeth. Whether a best friend sorting through our childhood games, the familiar howling laughter, or the cutting humor of my mother. Whether you, where ever you are or have been, and the loud, unmistakable, daily declared love that you wrapped around me, your soft arm, my sheepskin throws and rabbit furs. Whether I can accept, or somehow live with, that, only that raw, rare love as your legacy, as a shelter, as the shoulder that once flattened my fears.
