Seasons Change ...

This is the time of year to remember. Not just the dead, but the living. A time to listen to those old songs, to let the wine drift you into the gold and iridescent memories we keep for days like today.

Do you? Do you remember me? Or is it only me that thinks of you. I can feel that night. The thin trees out the kitchen window, the way the pear’s skin comes away in my hand.. the juice on my wrist. The katydids are silent. There is no wind. The moon rains down, cool in the dinner hour sky. We are five miles from the main road. On the way, there are two grave yards and a deep dip that marks the homestead of a famous confederate soldier. We are two hours from Tennessee. We are 4,152 miles away from my home. My sleeping babies with soft cheeks nestled into their beds. My soon to be ex husband pacing downstairs.

It’s not like I remember hard. I have a gift for these memories. The retelling of them. I can conjure you in a breath. The twisting fall of a leaf from a high branch. Slowly. Elegantly. The story twists around to fall, told and abandoned again. There is no bruising.

We both survived. Barely. You beat the shit out of your car, the bones you broke clean enough to heal without a scar. You are one of the few who survived circumstances as this. You are one of the lucky ones. We are. Both.

It took me a long time to feel lucky. To feel blessed. Did you struggle with the hang-over of perfume and moonlight? Did you remember things that cut you to the bone, the learning to love, the learning to live in the reality that we built? How many nights passed, breathing in and out… knowing it was what had to be done? That the pain would dissipate. That I would walk out on the other side, whole. Dammit. Yes I would. That love would not break me down.

But was it love? Was it? Come now, don’t bullshit me. We are old friends. Was it really love or was it some other phenomena? Stubbornness? An excuse to run?

I don’t even know how long it has been.

Peaches still do not taste as sweet as those held in my palm, the Missouri air holding it together, the Mississippi River a dirty road to be followed and explored.

I don’t love you, but I remember what it tastes like. And although my love now is something less green, more savory and robust… I know that it is not the same. Nothing can sustain itself with that kind of passion for long.

I don’t love you anymore. Instead, I am thankful. I survived. I walked out on the other side, wiser. Whole. Me.

This is the time of year we visit the graves we hide, the buried things we secreted away. This is the time of year we remember how good it feels to be alive. Awake. Real.

If not unscathed, we are healed in this new light.



G.