Another thing you realize, given enough time: how simple everyone is. You grow up thinking you’re this incredibly complex being-- and maybe some of us at least start out that way-- but somewhere along the way you hear yourself talking out loud and it sounds just like something your father would say. And it’s not the first time this has happened. And you realize that just as you once figured out your parents, summed them up in a neat list of traits and quirks, you’ve become that easy to pin down. Despite all the nuance and the details and the little memories, the ones no one else knows about, despite all those years of living it isn’t that hard to capture you in a numbered list.
We’re just a series of patterns. A list of habits good and bad and in between..
The way I tilt my head to one side, like a hound, when I’m listening to something.
The particular laughter I reserve for Isra.
The way I come back here, time and time again, never finding what I’m looking for.
Old dogs, old tricks.
A question floats my way, light as a feather. Does the sky look different on the other side of the ocean? I think about it for just a second.
“No.”
I think I could be defined by the things I don’t say just as much as the things I do. I don’t say that no matter how far I go, it’s all just shades of blue. I don’t say that we hadn’t done a lot of looking at the sky. I don’t say but the fog was different, in the mornings when it came rolling in from the North. A fog so thick you could lose yourself in it. And maybe I did, maybe I did, maybe I did. Maybe I never came home.
But if I was still out there in the fog, who's here in my body?
I glance to Ipomoea. He doesn’t look a day older than the first time we met. How long ago was that-- A year? Three? I get that feeling again, the same one I get when I’m looking at Isra in the lamplight, moonlight over her shoulder like she’s going somewhere. Knowing one day my knees will buckle, my back will break. It was the feeling-- I haven’t felt it since I was a kid-- of being left behind.
But we still have so much to do together.
I try not to think about it. It was too much like stepping on a dagger and then, recognizing the pain, not withdrawing but instead driving it deeper into the flesh with the force of my own body. Thoughts like that, I knew well, were not good. “Hello, Ipomoea.” I smile briefly, tired. My words had more fondness than I felt they had a right to. It wasn't like we were dear old friends or anything. But there was a gentleness to the dawn sovereign that I felt drawn to, a kindred soul. “How have you been?”
Then I turn to the young stranger. He’s just a kid, maybe half my age. Stride of a warrior. So much left to lose, I think. “No, stay.” It’s so easy to brush off his apology, his offer to leave. Nights like this, company just feels right. “I’m Eik.” I smell Solterra on him, and feel that familiar longing for a place that is no longer home. I miss it. The long twilights, the sunlight in the canyons. The citadel and all its secrets. “Tell me about the desert.”
E I K
the world, a double blossom, opens:
sadness of having come,
joy of being here.
We’re just a series of patterns. A list of habits good and bad and in between..
The way I tilt my head to one side, like a hound, when I’m listening to something.
The particular laughter I reserve for Isra.
The way I come back here, time and time again, never finding what I’m looking for.
Old dogs, old tricks.
A question floats my way, light as a feather. Does the sky look different on the other side of the ocean? I think about it for just a second.
“No.”
I think I could be defined by the things I don’t say just as much as the things I do. I don’t say that no matter how far I go, it’s all just shades of blue. I don’t say that we hadn’t done a lot of looking at the sky. I don’t say but the fog was different, in the mornings when it came rolling in from the North. A fog so thick you could lose yourself in it. And maybe I did, maybe I did, maybe I did. Maybe I never came home.
But if I was still out there in the fog, who's here in my body?
I glance to Ipomoea. He doesn’t look a day older than the first time we met. How long ago was that-- A year? Three? I get that feeling again, the same one I get when I’m looking at Isra in the lamplight, moonlight over her shoulder like she’s going somewhere. Knowing one day my knees will buckle, my back will break. It was the feeling-- I haven’t felt it since I was a kid-- of being left behind.
But we still have so much to do together.
I try not to think about it. It was too much like stepping on a dagger and then, recognizing the pain, not withdrawing but instead driving it deeper into the flesh with the force of my own body. Thoughts like that, I knew well, were not good. “Hello, Ipomoea.” I smile briefly, tired. My words had more fondness than I felt they had a right to. It wasn't like we were dear old friends or anything. But there was a gentleness to the dawn sovereign that I felt drawn to, a kindred soul. “How have you been?”
Then I turn to the young stranger. He’s just a kid, maybe half my age. Stride of a warrior. So much left to lose, I think. “No, stay.” It’s so easy to brush off his apology, his offer to leave. Nights like this, company just feels right. “I’m Eik.” I smell Solterra on him, and feel that familiar longing for a place that is no longer home. I miss it. The long twilights, the sunlight in the canyons. The citadel and all its secrets. “Tell me about the desert.”
the world, a double blossom, opens:
sadness of having come,
joy of being here.
@Ipomoea @Zayir <3 <3
Time makes fools of us all
