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Friday, January 20, 2012

Matches

You are yellow.

A burning, fiery white hot yellow that is blindingly pure and leaves me mesmerized. It’s sometimes as if everything you touch is set on fire, a sweeping flame blown by the Santa Ana’s and I find myself standing as far back as I can to avoid the licking flames, fear of myself being consumed.  And all I can do is watch you burn until there is nothing but ashes and it is my job to scoop them up. I scoop them up and I scatter them to the earth and I pray. Pray for the day your flame no longer consumes but ignites, for the day I can touch the flames without being burned.

From the moment the life you are came spilling out of me I knew. I knew then you were dangerous. And I was right.  Tearing out my heart and giving me a soul, in that moment you took your first breath a match was lit and there was no extinguishing its glow….the years have found us both standing side by side, but with this space, a gush of wind blowing away the words we wish we could take back, the things left unspoken, and I reach for your hand and pull back singed fingers. The tips barely graze and you run, and then you are gone.

I have chased you through the years, through the fires set, from house to house, the walls burning and pulsing with the lives we have started and shed…everyone has come and gone and here we stand, waiting for the last embers to die out, and I cannot stop the tears. Tears I spill for the divide that becomes greater and greater between us because he isn’t who he promised you he’d be…because I am not who you want me to be…because you fight what you are becoming.  A river that flows and weaves a trail between the raging crackling sparks, and yet fails to cross paths, fails to douse the destruction that is you…


I fail to rein you in, my sweet sweet girl, fail to catch you, and the day has now come when you have consumed everything in your path except me…and I feel the licking flames creeping, stretching across wide open space, and I close my eyes and I stand. I stand, hands in air, as the burning heat can be felt against my neck, the palms of my hands, the wind catching and teasing the strands of singeing hair and my tears are eternally dry, and I realize that it isn’t you I am chasing, but a version of my former self, and I fear there is no end to the damage we can both do. In that moment I grasp your hand and we stand in the center, burning as bright as the sun, and I open my eyes. And I see you for what you are. And it makes me love you that much more.

Yellow. You will always be yellow.


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