Community vs connection

Both are foundationally

Exceptionally

Necessary 

for a strong way forward

ANY way forward

I’ll tell ya, this starts all poetically, but it isn’t a poem.  It’s just another tiny moment of realization.  I live in a paradox of gratitude and jealousy…joy and grief…optimism and depression

People from my past, and from the mist, push through and zap my family with light…a sparkling halo of calm and hope and comfort

And I am able to spread magic

Small, sparkling, splendid magic

And then, my little magicians,

They go to bed

I see one of my friends in my mind’s eye:  with his wife and his three kids

Annoyed at struggles, worried about vomit, with so much family and the love of his life

To put his arm around, and lay beside.

I see another friend:  so very betrayed, she spent years fighting to be the best mother ever.  Her heart is a living spark of hope…always has been…and she is no longer alone…she lays her head beside the one she found online

And another friend:  such a sweet connection, caring, yet intentionally distant. I keep reaching, accidentally, into the void where I think he stands..

There is also the one whose cancer came to her life while she was pregnant.  From a distance, she seems to have love, again. I am grateful...and, if I am to be honest, bitter...jealous

And the one whose death came on the birthing bed…a moment of talking to him, years ago, gave me moments of connection that made me pause, wonder, hope…for not long enough…and there isn’t even a friendship…but I see him in the distance, with a woman in his profile

Evaporation

Is part of the water cycle

we drink what once was
dinosaur pee
 

Disease continued a cycle that had nothing to do with him, My Love,

One where I end

Alone.

But cycles are about connection

And life is about community

Remembering that it’s the tiny bits and pieces

That make the puzzle of every picture

So, in the evenings, when the moon sings softly to the vibrating stars

And the sun sings harmony on the upside down

My task

Is unending and large:

Do not become what they were

Do not give up

Do not give directions on life based on what not to do.

     Imagine:  a taxi comes to pick you up.  In the back seat you say
     “I do not want to go to D.C. I also do not want to go to Baltimore.”

     And…?  

I do not want to be the women that were.  I do not want to be

A “woman in waiting”

I do not want to be broken, to be lost, to be afraid, to be

ALONE

But

I’m in the damn taxi

So I cannot choose from places of “I do not”

I accept the community that surrounds me,

From so many distances away

I crave so desperately the connections

I do not seem well enough to carve

So

I

Will

Breathe

And do my best to create a vision

Of what I

DO

Want.

Even when I do not know what that is.