Time

I think the best gift you can give someone is your time. You only have so much. You have numbered heartbeats, countable breaths and a measurable impact.

I think the best gift you can receive from someone is their time. They only have so much and yet they are giving it to you. They are not giving you 5 minutes, or half an hour. They are giving you 350 beats of their heart, 600 breaths.

Time of course isn't always just given and received. Sometimes it's taken. It's a boyfriend who promised forever but ended it. It's a disease spreading through your cells. It's a murderer stalking prey in the night. The true thieves of time, cutting your heartbeats short, lowering your breath count, taking what you never meant to give so much of.

For Better or Worse

So on the world turns. Day and night pass by like yellow cabs in New York City. Unrelenting reliability. Say for instance, there is a girl walking those same streets. Say for instance she’s as thin as the sugary glaze atop a typical creme brûlée. Say for instance you could see into her soul if you looked past the translucent color of her skin and the frailty of her bones. She doesn’t like crowds much at all. The days in New York are endlessly filled with traffic. Vehicles and human alike. So night is when she walks around. Say she wears a jacket full of little holes to protect her from the glacial air. But she probably knows that even if she brought along a parka, the gooseflesh would still be there. Some types of shivers and colds come from the inside and show on the outside. She listens to the music playing somewhere in her head. The slow consistency of the drum beats reverberate through her cranium. The soft chords of a grand piano echo in her ears.

Say she is a walking contradiction. Say for instance she is quiet yet loud. Ignorant yet smart. Tenacious yet timid. Open yet guarded. Determined yet discouraged.

Say for instance she's tired of walking but she doesn't know how to get home from here. Then why move at all? Just stay put. She sits down right in the middle of the road. Why does she have to go anywhere? She can stay here forever. Never moving forward. A place too cruel to be heaven but too kind to be hell.

Say for instance I find her there. Say for instance I find her and I know her.

And I love her.

The Blacksmith

Have you ever paused one day and immersed yourself in memory? Perhaps you were watering the cheerful flowerbeds in your garden. Perhaps you were shooting hoops in the park. Perhaps you were walking your dog through the neighborhood. Have you stopped suddenly and thought about everything that time has taken from you? I find myself doing that more often than not. There are a lot of things that I should have done, should have said. That got me thinking. Is it worse when you say something you wish you hadn't or when you don't say something and end up wishing you had? And then, in the dead of night, those 'What If?' moments come back in to haunt me.

If you had the chance to go back in time and alter a specific incident, would you? After a lot of thought, I realized I wouldn't. Every second of agony is experienced for a reason. Every hardship is occurs for some purpose. The pain of our pasts has shaped all of us. It is the well-known blacksmith. We may not understand it but I feel that it does us good.
This is me being thankful for everything, the good and the bad. The process of self-discovery is heartrending but enlightening. I hope to see you on the other side of the tunnel with a bright smile on your tired face. 

For The Love of Dreaming

I feel as though a myriad of swells has surrounded me, entered me and drowned me. Is this what a sleepless night feels like? I think not. I have the feeling that it is what a restless night does to a person. For I got eons of sleep but zero seconds of rest. My mind, numbed by the night, the necessity for closed eyes but not solaced. Not at all.

I used to dream. Perhaps I still do but the subconscious experiences are quickly kicked out of the house. At any rate, I can't recall any of my dreams. Nightmares don't visit me either. I suppose one might claim that this sort of situation is desirable. To sleep free of nightmares is a common wish. Even if it is at the expense of good dreams. I disagree. I have the sense that dreams and nightmares no matter how glorious or monstrous, give life to sleep. Otherwise, I'll be nothing but a corpse, breathing but experiencing a disturbing, chilling oblivion.

Ephemeral

    How often does this happen? You hardly pause what you are doing as you wave goodbye. You barely get out a smile before you are swallowed up by phone calls and work-related issues and just your busy life. You never say the words because you assume that he knows them. Perhaps he does. You go about your daily business. Quotidian events get to you more today then other days. You're impatient and critical. You don't know why. The banter that goes on around you seems asinine and utterly lacking in relevance. You have the strangest feeling inside, a feeling that makes your stomach turn now and then. This too, you cannot explain nor comprehend. You watch the clock more often than necessary. Each tick seems the length of one lifetime. You can't help but wonder if there is something you forgot to do or a person you forgot to wish "Happy Birthday." You know there is something about today that is just wrong.
    The time for returning home rolls around at last. You expect to feel relief. Instead, the uneasiness grows and becomes suddenly immense. Your heart races as you get in the old wheezing car. Your mind houses thoughts that are practically cyclones. Your thoughts spin round and round not making sense. You can't seem to connect the dots. As your car tyres kiss the driveway, it hits you so squarely. Panic rises from your stomach, your heart sinks to the ground. You throw the car door open and step out into the cool air of dusk. When you call for him, silence is the only answer. Your knees begin to quiver because your body reacts quicker than your mind. The reaction came before your mind pieced the puzzle together. You force yourself to think the three simple, elementary words :

He is gone.

Three simple words... but they rupture your heart leaving it bleeding and seemingly irreparable. Ignoring the truth, you search. With trembling knees, you wander the streets. Your eyes try to see through the unassailable darkness. You scream for him but all you hear are the echoes of your own hoarse, agonized voice. You look in every nook and cranny but you don't need to because you're absolutely positive that he has left. Mechanically, you unlock the door, step inside the dark house and just stare into space for a long, indefinite time. Finally, you flip on the lights, visit the cupboard and snatch a wine glass. As the red elixir slides down your throat, your numb mind wanders. Why? Why did he leave? Was it something you did wrong? Why was there nothing to explain it? There was no note stuck to the fridge or left by the phone. He was just gone as if his existence was a mere conjuring of your imagination. Of course, you always expected this to happen sooner or later but after years of felicity, the thought had all but disappeared. Like so many, you had overestimated the amount of time you would be allowed. Now though, all you have are pictures you can hardly bear to look at. As you crawl under the covers, you ask of no one, "Why didn't he at least say goodbye?" Memories hack at the walls you swiftly built to maintain your sanity. All you see when you glance around the empty abode is where he should be. You keep hoping he will return. You wait by the door all the time, just staring at it, thinking he will barge in and take you in his arms like he used to. You wait throughout long winter nights when the hearth emits warmth that doesn't touch your heart. It is then impossible for you to imagine a greater pain.

    He was an ephemeral gift. When the desperation of awaiting his return has all but faded, when there is not even a glimmer of a possibility that he would return, when clarity looks you in the eye, you are left with a dull ache that you know will always be there. It is a part of you, a scar untouchable by time or reason. It will be a part of you for eternity.

Unseeable

My eyes, of their own volition, flickered to him. Like all the other times, I was taken aback by everything about him. His eyes were an uncommon shade of green. I rarely have cause to stare into them for more than a few seconds. But, in those precious seconds in which I stare into those pools, are the most precious seconds of the day. Staring into his eyes was mesmerizing. I cannot adequately describe them but, it was like seeing a whole new universe ringed by emerald irises. His eyes always gave away his emotions. When he was elated, ecstatic, his eyes would light up like a kid's face when receiving candy. When he was troubled, tenebrous, the life in those emerald eyes would be vacuumed into the atmosphere, coldness and emptiness taking its place. When he was enraged or passionate, a perceptible blaze would burn in the hearths of those eyes. They unconsciously told split second stories to me every single day.

His smile was a different story. An assembly of perfect teeth that said what the mouth could not. He had various types of smiles. There was the one he wore as a polite response to a hello. That one said "Have a nice day!" When I was lucky enough to receive anything at all, that was the smile I got. There was the gloomy smile. The smile that resembled the sun desperately clawing at the grey clouds, trying to shine through and persevering as if his life depended on it. This smile never reached his eyes. When my eyes conveyed this to my utterly overworked heart, a disjointed rhythm was produced. Then there was the smile he gave her. That smile was hands down the most beautiful smile in all of history. That smile set my world burning a gorgeous inferno as it lit everything up, turning omnipresent darkness into brilliance. He wore this smile every time she passed by him. He donned this gorgeous expression whenever she took his hand or gave him a peck on the cheek. A green flame burned long and dull in my tired chest. I wondered idly if she deserved that smile. Had she loved him from the first second she saw him? At first sight? Did she notice how that smile would touch his eyes and set the atmosphere a trifle happier? I did.

He breezed by again, today. The perfume of his presence engulfed me as I watched the lanky boy incognizant of his beauty slowly stride down the hallways. Would he ever know the way my heart yearned to break from my chest beat in harmony with his? Would he know the way my world lighted up like daybreak when he was near? He was him and I was... well, I was me. The slight figure foolishly afraid of speaking the words of her heart.

Arduous

Picture this. Just humor me.

You're in a dark tunnel that is dimmer than the darkest twilight you laid your eyes on. You have to keep moving forward. You have to force yourself to find a way out, find a way to the rich happiness your fatigued soul and body so greatly requires. Then, out of nowhere, while you are sitting in the middle of the path and contemplating staying there, a beam of light cuts right through the darkness. The ray slices open the dark like the light streams through the room when one removes the curtains. You can see now. You can see the walls of the tunnel and the blacktop beneath. The light illuminates the world enough for you to see the path to more light. With rekindled determination and anticipation, you push up from the ground, brush gravel from your hands and trudge on. You find yourself hungry for more light, ravenous for it. It is a compulsion. You take off running. You push your lungs until they find difficulty serving your needs. The lack of oxygen only strengthens your will to reach the light. You know you have to keep moving to reach it. You travel around the stray shadows that obstruct the path, only thinking about the reward of reaching the end. The light grows brighter as you sprint and recedes a little for every second you take a beat. Despite the arduous process, the diminishing hope that you'll ever make it, you remind yourself that those are tall hurdles that intend to stumble you and make sure you reside on the ground for eternity. Despite all the drawbacks, the negativity, the desolation that slowly conquers your mind, you know that you must reach the light. For, the world beyond the walls of the tunnel will be brilliant, lustrous, awe-inspiring and significant.

Simply put, I am onto something. I don't know how long it will take to reach the end or if the end will ever be within reach. Nevertheless, I am hopeful for those rapturous days that await me at the end of this seemingly aeonian journey.
I am optimistic. The tunnel has to end somewhere.