Oh pain, how I would sidestep thee to a softer plain, an undramatic vale of ease and harmony, but I should probably ask… what do you want from me? As travelers embarking on new travels we work, we travail; it is work, it is uneasy, but I know well by now that the disease arises in the stagnancy – and stagnancy can take the guise of movement, of predictably getting-up-and-leaving – last night by the fire I had to will every bone in my body to rest in the fires of our discontent — how am I meant to forget the pronouncement that you don’t love me? — easily; I can forget it as a child forgets their trouble instantly once the field appears surreptitiously, suddenly, beckoning – like the fields beyond my housing estate that captured my child’s mind in endless summers of rapture – again, here is unchartered ground, keen for your discovery – and what bliss enshrouded me, one I have rarely felt, rarely waited long enough to feel – the bliss of having loved so completely that I know I have lost nothing and gained everything, and only in staying long enough could I allow the shrouds of certainty to fall, revealing the long-sought bounty – after the expectation, promise and illusion shatter, crafted by the stiff parts that refuse the surrender to the unknown required to walk this path authentically – I ever beg for less but hope for more – and I hope for the life less ordinary – lying in bed this morning with a cup of tea – as extraordinary in plain sight as anyone could ever be – in the monotony of a day breaking at the seams with our joy, sorrow, fear and ecstasy – bathing in the afterglow of what happens when souls make love, when the veils of what I am and what you are to me disappear, all our hopes and histories swept into the calming sea – at your door a native world made known to me by your sons and daughter, cut from cloth that is strange to me — made of stuff meant for the rising, shaking, quaking of humanity – can you see me? I ask again because I’m certain you’re prone to forget what truth arises from our bodies once we’ve shed the sheaths of personality – I ask again because I wonder what I am to you, and what you are to me – I ask again because the little girl inside me is scared that no one has noticed how brilliantly she notices all there is to see in this verdant, sacred, vibrant world, and feels lonely in her magic – but she grows, remembers that deep down we all know and need remembering – and over here watching the sun set on these borrowed hills I smile, knowing if all I am to you is a key to your remembering, honestly, that’s fine by me.