There is a profound emptiness in the lack of pretty green eyes. A void that no song could ever fill. A gap which no clever words could ever span. A chasm echoing with the memory of her embrace.
I ache for the simple refreshments of her. The sound of her laugh. The way she leaned in when I reached to tuck wayward hair back behind a delicate ear. Her smile. The smell of her skin. The trail of freckles down a perfect body that made me want to play a naughty game of “connect the dots.”
And then erase it and do it all over again.
She is astoundingly complicated. Yet so graciously simple. Flawed, but perfectly so. Creative and brilliant, when she’s not getting in her own way and sabotaging her potential. Conflicted–yet determined.
And, clearly starving for better things.
I once told her that people are like pointillism pictures. That each of us is made up of millions of dots of memory. And experience. Some are beautiful. Some breathtakingly sad. Some tragic, while others ridiculous. But taken together, they combine to create the beautiful image of a life on the canvas.
Hers is the most beautiful example I have ever seen. I would spend a lifetime studying her. But, I would never want to figure her out. Just the experience of her makes me a better man– a better lover. A better example. And, a better writer.
Because every person who attempts to put words on paper at the level I struggle to master needs a muse. Some inspiration to trigger the process. That… spark to ignite the fires of phrase and soliloquy.
And hers is the fire that burns brightest inside my head.
She walked with me through these dirty city streets before I even knew her name. She traveled with me across the face of strange countries before she ever knew mine. Because she was always there. For years–decades even–just the hazy outline of an ideal out on the periphery. A shadow that I chased before I even understood the significance.
Then suddenly, she was here. And that fog retreated. Vision cleared. Colors snapped into focus the first time we held hands down on Wayne’s Street. Shadows solidified in the passion of a first kiss, jolted into existence on that remarkable surge when first lips touch.
She was right when she told me “Boooooooy…..you got it bad.” Because I do. There is no denying that fact. I was lost long before I found her; I discovered myself still lost when she had to go away.
But for a brief moment, I was found. Centered and grounded, with her laying there in my arms. She was my home. And appetite. And the relaxation for which we had both been aching.
I have read all the books. Listened to all the songs. But they were all wrong. Heaven isn’t in the sky. Or found in the majesty of a golden sunrise. It is 120 miles north of this City of Wayne, straight up the giggle-inducing run up 69 North.
120 miles. But it may as well be a million.
Yet I would still crawl on my hands and knees across every single mile just to hear her whisper my name again.
And then spend the rest of my life writing about her…
