to those who are true and not afraid

Yes, this is all i can tell you. we loved one another for a very long time, okay. the flowers you braided in my hair i then pressed close to my heart, petal by petal, colors bleeding into my bloodstream, then out my pores and touching you touching me.

you carried me some times, part of the way. this was my path in yours. we could fight it, or we could like it. Or we could try to like it or love one another and our selves through it, embrace it, take it, appreciate it, hold it in our hands and hold it up to the light, let it reflect in the light. Absorb the light and take notice of the shadows also where they recessed. how they came over and dampened the heat of the white light, softened the potency…

The lines in our skins, the patterns, the spirals, the curve that our eyes traced and followed, lost and found, dipped into and cooled, rose out and ascended with our spirits to the open air. The boys who showed love all the time on front street. some curious wondering. most admiring. nice and sweet. strangers and how we meet. and we made an organic whole. the wholeness we saw, they saw and reflected back to us. well that would bring on smiles. that would last, remember? for a little while at least.

we were really of the same kind, the same blood. This would only matter if we cared to come in line and believe in it, the world, in us, our family, in self, our selves. This seemed to me, the youngest, another chance for that to die for kind of attention. Received when i was not wanting or needing something impossible for you to give. Because this is true. That we are our most formidable challenges. This i would risk it all on. The whole house I do not own. The health i still possess, on a youth level. A phsyiological level.

The psychology is only so prominent as our experiences. The heavy traumas are fresh and remembered in my daily life, i cannot help how they run. They run sometimes close to the surface like salmon running home. The subtle ones are deep running, like they do not move at all, my eyes might suggest. Nothing going on down there, just peaceful easy subcurrent substorm lethargy of egg guarding and backward pull of crayfish tailspins. Yes, these are subdued or so seem. But you and I we have together swum the waters from top to tail. We have gone with, against, and stubbornly for the sake of love and love lost… i can say embedded in my heart, i often most did so unremitting and unfashionable. not so pretty, and without fail.

Well at our best we were grace. Full of grace. Inspired by our mothers. Mom, i love the gift she gave me in grace. They had more to give, our moms, they could now but they refuse to part with their wisdom. Why? Were the transgressions of our youth so devastating to cause the divide? To deny us these wonderful blessings? Failure to give with the not knowing of outcome or consequence or even the course of the ride through to the outcome. We have lost their expectations. We are no longer predictable in any way.

Who will ever come to familiarity with the methods of survival in a relationship which manifested seven years of sincere absence? Who will not bleed by this Conscious impact? Who will feel the violence of this horrible Truth through omission? Rendered what was once a great and savory fullness of love and life and laughter and tears, to some empty background behind form, some staged back blender. The efforts to blend are lost even, as may be the efforts toward translation, communication so long lost. Why?

We long ago stopped asking …

we long ago lost the towns that sheltered us, the homes receding, the wood thinning, the blankets smothering, the smiles insincere, the feeling when the one who made you cannot forgive you. Digging subconsciously. Mining for the passion that once sustained the momentum you all started, when you contribute to creation.

Long before february first, nineteen seventy-three… even before my brother was born… before june, nineteen seventy…. before my love she came to be, before may…. What happened to that love? All we feel today… is the