Just Breathe

"Oh I don't want to hurt, there's so much in the world to make me believe.
Stay with me, Lord, I see."
Pearl Jam



Just breathe. Feel the air enter and reach out, growing long, thin tentacles to reach thirsty molecules. Just breathe, in and out, and the world rushes like a top around you, leaving you dizzy and faltering with your hands out to find a stable place. Just breathe, a simple, involuntary act, yet when you hold your breath to make the turning stop, you are forced to take in air at the point that divides being and not being, and you are so thankful to fill your lungs up, like finding the surface after being forced under water. Just breathe, slowly, methodically, as the blur of people you know, and you don't know, and the people you think you know but don't, weave into something abstract (and at this point, a man in a dark, ill-fitting suit is looking at you saying, "I can see the points of pain, in the middle of this mess of people, who may or may not have been important, but clearly there is a point of impact here." He thinks he knows, but you breathe, controlled. He doesn't truly know, in his art head, you. As you proceed and look at the sky, you take in the air of what you know and though it should make sense, the stars circle like they are entering a dark galactic drain, and you blink hard, and shake your head, like rattling a great magic eight ball, in hopes that the right answer will float to the top. "Yes". "No". "Maybe". "Try again later." Just breathe, breathe, the audible sounds of air entering and exiting and grounding you, because in the end the pure element of oxygen, there standing proudly on the periodic table, a big emphatic O screaming, "Look at me, I am a building block of the universe, I am a great Fundamental, I am a reason for Being", is what matters. The breath in your lungs and the beating of your heart. It all comes down to this.

Neverland

Your Peter Pan shadow
Sewn childishly to
The naked balls of
My feet follows
Me everywhere
In the fading wash
Of daylight you appear
And dance long legs
Stretching out in
Front of me
You mimic
In dark motion
Me swift
And clinging
Symphonized and
Yet distorted
Your head appears
Too far away but
In a linear equation
To mine which translates
Into as fast as
Elements approach each
Other they never meet
In the center
Even if they
Seem to

Cracks in the Pavement

I walk with her. She is tiny; just a slip of a girl in mismatched clothes. It is what she chose, this blue, flowered skirt and t-shirt with a flamboyant peace sign plastered across it.

I walk with her, although she feels as if she is the only girl in the world, so intent on her task, the task of skipping cracks.

Dangerously, they loom in her path; cracks filled with vagrant weeds sticking their green heads up from such a minute amount of soil. Dangerously, they break the monotony of the cement. Jagged edges, like bolts of lightening, course through the veins of the pavement.

She skips over them, meticulously etching a path through streaks of air laced through stone.

Step on a crack, break your mother's back.

I walk with her, and I feel the fissure, like that through the pavement, break my heart open. It is like a doctor opening up the organ that keeps me alive, and examining it in an inquisitive way. Yes, this woman has signs of heartache. Yes, that should be the diagnosis: heartbreak secondary to life.

I watch her walk ahead of me, my daughter, my Amelia, so serious in her approach to piecing together the mysteries of the world that surrounds her. She could set at a table and attempt to put together a puzzle for hours; her tiny hands, fingernails containing just a faint fleck of glitter nail polish, putting things together gingerly, determining whether it is a good fit, whether it is all wrong. She is patient; she finds the right links, she takes her time, she knows when pieces work together.

I walk with her and watch her, how she approaches the cracks in the pavement, how she steps over the imperfections with precision. She avoids; her sandeled feet are inept at finding solid, unscathed ground. What a perfectionist I have on my hands.

And the fissure in my heart seems to widen. A pain shoots through me, and I cannot be sure why.

Maybe it is because I am almost 35; I have lived nearly half of my life and I have arrived at this point. I am looking behind my child, and I see all the imperfections in the world. I see the pitfalls and the heartache. I see the hardships and the trials. I know they are as inevitable as the cracks in the sidewalk. It just takes time for the cracks to form and spread. It just takes time for them to run a course through your heart when for no reason you stop and grasp your chest and wonder what just happened to you.

I walk with her. Amelia. The sun weaves through her straight hair and sets it on fire with light. She is so serious. She skips over another crack. And then another. She turns around and looks at me with her eyes that are the color of freshly minted pennies.

Momma, I love you.

She says this a lot. Out of no where she pronounces her love for me. Then she goes about the business of making the world orderly. She is meticulous, like she is solving the mathematical equations that will define the meaning of the universe. Maybe she will.

My heart hurts unexpectedly, like a wedge is being driven into it and splitting it open like a watermelon. Sometimes it aches for things that are painful; sometimes it aches for happy things, and sometimes it aches for time to stop. To stop at the moment your daughter is skipping past an imperfection on the sidewalk, copper eyes turned to you, and sun filling her hair. When she opens her mouth and in a tiny voice proclaims her love.

As I type this, my heart is hurting. Maybe that is God making me aware of things that are important. Pain alerts us. My heart, my pain, it shows me what is important.

Amelia, I walk with her. I take her hand and make sure to avoid my footfall on the next crack in the sidewalk.