MeliGoesRogue

distance is a wretched thing..it is more than miles it is time, it is heart, it is the long road with only the unknown at the end…a burnt building or a blind man. Where in the world is Meli…she has gone inside. Inside is the haunted red room we dare not open and yet she enters it with the tilt of her head and the emptying of the glass. She desires sleep and the security of a warm blanket and the breathing of the tricolored figure beside her and yet her tears have built a moat around her and she is unable to cross it and find that rest she desires.

I don't know that I ever believed in fairy tales, perhaps as a small helpless child I believed that mice could turn into horses and that princes would marry maids. As I aged the length of my cape grew…it never grew warmer, simply heavier. I don't believe in princes; I believe in the Mr. Rochester's of the world. Those burdened with the sins of the past trying desperately to find fresh air to breath and supple skin to caress. I could not fault him for his cowardliness; the distance between the love of his Jane and reality seemed to much to bear with his truth dragging him down. His desperation had driven him to a lie and it would be desperation that would unveil it.

There is something to be said of consuming love, even greater to be said of the desperate desire to feel it. I fall into the latter. Its been almost three months since my return from the Emerald Isle and yet it feels only yesterday I drove those cliffs and found my way across the burren. In all that time alone I never felt alone, I felt full of life and excited for what I would truly see beyond the curve. My heart misses it and yet my hope is that I wont have to return to find it. I feel a kinship to Ireland that I can’t explain and yet I fear it will be many more months before she holds me in her rainy and muddy arms.

I never finished telling you about the journey, perhaps because those last few days the GPS was gone and somehow my aimless wondering brought me where I needed to go. I am prying the door open to show you the rest of the journey but just like the wonderful tea that warmed me in the morning, I must steep in this warm water and soon the words will stain the pages and I will once again be made whole.

A few weeks ago I was driving to a very dear friends home I drove past the overpass that saw the death of a loved one quite a few years ago. My hand went to the charred rosary and I tried to remember his face…why does it seem to fade from us? I kept driving, unlike the many times I stopped and allowed the tears to fall never forcing them and never stopping them. They would just fall like leaves on fall from a tree when they can no longer be held there. As I look around me there are so many pieces of him and yet he is never close and always far. The first night I left his grave I could hear his voice whispering in my ear and yet the only sound was the involuntary sobs that left my soul.

“When you feel the waves of sadness rushing over you do not fear they will not overtake you, I will be beside you breathing life into your lungs and love into your heart”

grief is a wretched thing, it offers no distance and no respite. Only the assurance that it will remain, it will not overtake but it will remain.

-SilentC