when all is done
I will love you as before this life began.
but I will still be me
whole and uninterrupted.
words featherweight on my back
fall from your lips like pearls dropped onto the sand.
I wake from sleep into dreams,
a sepia world receding with the tide
and approaching with the dawn.
words scatter the land, tumbleweeds rushing.
little pieces of who and why are scattered
and you hold one.
let there be no doubt,
no fear, no prejudice, no hate
nor confidence, no laughter, no joy, no heart
without the serene peace of knowing your love.
it is all done.
still I love you as I must have before we were,
for there is no other way but the page, and you;
could that be all: I am content.

there is light beyond the horizon, I hold the race close to my chest
and we sail on. the words under me the waves,
your love behind me the wind.
the road goes ever on and on, you are gone from me,
sight unseen, and still I love you.
-Vera Penn-

i am going to be published! just a little thing, a little poem in a little lit mag out of gainesville of all places, but it is yet another step towards bigger goals, bigger ideations. my book is 1/3 done. more than that really but the first section is the only one i feel confident about. this has been a dream i have tried to keep to myself; an aspiration that i have held very close to my heart. there is so much room for hurt and for failure in the world of writing. not in the writing but in the sharing with other people, any other people. my mom is the only person who reads on a regular basis. every bit of who i am goes into the page, more than i put anywhere else in my life, and for every person who i have shared with, half of them have scorned it or said it was no good or turned it down. that wears a little bit, tiny ragged edges around my heart, and yet i have to keep trying. why? well. i don't actually know. but i do. and much like my running, no matter how hard the race is, to see the email saying that someone, somewhere, is putting my words into published work, crossing that finish line, is well worth the effort and tears and time put into each word. and for every work that is scorned or disliked or turned down, i learn a little more about how to write. so it is, indeed, worth it.

in other news, if you remember the post about the Lapsed Friend, who i previously addressed as chris, i finally emailed this person. they wrote me first but i gathered my courage and realized that, well, i have sh*tall to lose. i can't imagine that LF will ever talk to me again, to be honest, and i can't blame LF. but it was damn time to be honest. i worked to not accuse, because i have nothing to blame LF for outside of being a crappy friend sometimes, which is only human. i tried to ask the questions that i wanted to ask, and explain my own growing silences over the past months. i took responsibility for my part in how LF and i got to where we are, and i tried to be tactful. we know how good i am at that...but i think maybe i did ok this time. i am both eager and anxious to see what, if anything, LF writes back. part of me is raring for the fight, the conversation; part of me wants to save that energy for my work, and running, and my friends here, for the places that i get as much as i give. and like i said, i don't think LF will write back. i might not were the positions reversed. i hope LF does. i hope LF remembers how, years ago, i held my tongue with another situation and how LF ended up getting very hurt and coming to me and saying, "you knew, didn't you?" and how LF said s/he wished i had said something earlier. but hindsight is bloody perfect and i doubt that any human, in all our common imperfections, can in fact display that much rugged integrity to recognize that sometimes the people who love you can hurt you the most, while all the time trying to tell you how much they love you.

and i wish i still loved LF like i used to. i just don't. i'm ok with that; i've spent many of the past months being hurt by how LF treated me and now i'm past it to where there is still interest in being friends, but for my sake we will probably never get to where we were. things shift, you know? and there are some, a rare few for each of us, who we hold on to through the daily earthquakes of life, who cling to us as hard as we to them.

a tidbit: the SIL told me the other day, in context of a long conversation, that i was optimistic. that is the first time anyone has called me that in my life. ever. and just when i thought i couldn't be surprised anymore...thanks, lady.