I set my bags down on the threshold and breathed in deeply.

This was my home, only mine, for the entire month of June.

Realizing my lifelong dream of being an actual published author of a work of fiction had been a dizzying whirl of deadlines, promotional tactics, emails, and a swiftly filling social calendar. In the wake of all this, I had decided to take a portion of my earnings to run away.

I needed time to let this all sink in, to appreciate this life goal being met, to get my bearings for the next idea. I wasn't even planning to do any writing, I just needed space. To remember who I was.

And so, here I was, suspended by a bridge to my very own treehouse villa, rented for a full month. No family or friends allowed.

I smiled to myself, and stepped through the door.

I went to walk the woods today.

Green and gold came pouring down

Into my open palms, into my outstretched arms

Into my expanding self.

I shared a breath with the woods today.

I breathed their air as they exhaled,

They breathed me in as I breathed out,

Drinking each other in like water.

I followed the path in the woods today.

Slender limbs stretched and arched together with mine,

Rustling whispers rushed after my steps,

And my progress was marked.

The woods made way for me again today.

And every time, I ache as I leave.

And every time, I feel their reaching.

And every time, I think of when I will return,

As though we had been lovers

And I was on a journey

Dreaming

Of homecoming.

Maybelle Agatha Schweetz was a picture in precious, a pleasant-faced little girl in a bright colored sundress, pink sandals, honey-colored hair in two long braids down her back. Cheerily licking an ice cream cone, she waved to passersby. No one waved back. Perhaps it was the blood on her hands.

It was a tale as old as time--or at least, as old as internet chat rooms.

Delaney knew that finding love online was not often a good idea, but it wasn't like she went looking for it. Chance was hanging around the same digital space when she first joined, and the match in their energy together was off the charts. She had been thrilled to discover someone else who knew how to enjoy conversation, both in the silliness and in the depths she so dearly loved to explore.

Chance was so much more vibrant than most people dared to be online. Where other people invested half their energy into a carefully cultivated mask, Chance was always himself, everywhere he went. He couldn't help it, it seemed. Delaney was drawn to the authenticity, no matter how much her natural caution tried to warn her.

They talked about anything and everything, not holding back, for three months. It felt more like a year to Delaney, for how many topics they dove into. Chance was fearless, no matter how murky the waters, and Delaney relished not having to slow down or resurface as she so often had to do with others. For once, she was the one having to keep pace with his relentless thirst to know everything. It was never cerebral for them, it was an immersion into as much of reality as they could discover.

She knew she loved him by the first month, but managed to hold it in for another three weeks. And then it burst from Chance first, and she rushed to meet him in the improbable, inconvenient, wonderful, awful truth of it. They dove towards each other, plumbed the depths and held their breath, watched the bubbles float to the surface as the brief hours they were both online continued.

For the rest of that happy year, Delaney and Chance found out just how much delight they had in each other. They realized how well they navigated brief misunderstandings and differences in conviction. They traveled concepts, friendships, soul aches, visions, tales they would never tell anyone else; they knew they traveled well together in all these and more.

There was just one problem.

Half the very real globe stood between them.

Tale as old as internet love.

The pressure of lives they couldn't drop, the weight of worlds so far apart, the burning need for oxygen that would only be felt in the real presence of each other-- it all became too much for the digital space where they met.

Delaney couldn't say it. Chance saved her from having to. They disentangled the places where hearts had entwined so joyously, embracing the pain as they had embraced the pleasure, holding each other through the divergent moment as long as it was possible.

And then it was over. A treasured memory that never quite faded, always friends and always dear, but always an impossible dream.

It was real.

It just didn't work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyWoZD5xfM8

The problem with being curious is contentment is the thing you never seem to discover.

The problem with choosing what to do with your life is that you have to choose many more things you will not do.

All those doors, softly shut. All those days, creeping away from a hundred things to fog up the glass on lives behind closed doors. Watching moments you don't have. Voyeur on might-have-been. And then the walk of shame back, and back, and back to your own door, left ajar for you. The sounds and scents like breadcrumbs leading you home.

Sometimes someone fogs up the glass on your door.

"You have your hands full!"

"I could never do what you do."

"I only have this much to handle and I'm struggling, I can't imagine what it must be like for you."

You sigh, you count up the blessings again, one...two...three...four...

And once they've piled up into a mountain at your feet, you sneak away to peer in at the other lives that are full, to imagine what it must be like.

1. Space

Burning cold glitters,

Need and function coalesce--

Stardust into flesh.

2. Air

Formless and heavy,

Effort to lift and push out,

Lungs have to practice.

3. Fire

Thought streaking across

Clouds of concept in bright heat--

Ragged, storming self.

4. Water

Mind and body move,

Skirt obstacles, rush onward,

Swim in liquid time.

5. Earth

Cupped humanity,

In history's dusty hands,

Dying until death.

I can't go back. I can't make different choices or speak to my younger self or use any of the methods of time travel dreamed up by so many who want to reach behind. This path, these choices, this present and the anticipated version of the future that I took--I can't change how it began. It feels like I should be able to, it was my path after all. I forged it myself, I took the trouble of walking through time, moment by moment, making decisions. You would think that would entitle some ownership, and you would think that ownership would come with editing rights. But no. It doesn't. There is only the choice now. And there is only the hope of a future that won't be so full of looking backwards to where it began.

Me: "Look. I don't want to lie to you, but I also don't want to scare you off, so you're going to have to read between the lines here a little. I know you have some embers you keep stoking in your soul, tucked away in a corner where you think I won't find it. I know you want to believe that pedantic chorus of platitudes, take off and see if you can make it to the moon. We both know that the "landing among the stars" is the cold, airless, lifeless, expanse of space where you have nothing between you and your failure. We both know the embers you expect to blaze into rocket fuel are more likely to fizzle into vapor once you hit that icy emptiness waiting for you.

Don't give me that look, I'm not the enemy here.

If you wanted it that badly, you would have taken the time to learn how to build f***in rockets, not sit around poking hot coals of envy inside. This was your call. You chose safe. It's safe here. We can breathe here.

We need to breathe.

We need to breathe."

Myself: "Right! We do need to breathe.

And I'm choking to death down here!

Plodding from minute to minute, choking on the dust of every day, feeling heavier with every passing day, I can't keep doing this. I can't keep on just to keep on, it'll kill me. Kill us. I need something more."

Me: "Oh, just 'something' more? What, exactly. Do you even know?

No, you don't, you have no plan, and no back-up plans, because to have a back-up, you need an original. And you've got nothing--not one thing--that is original."

Myself: "I can't find something original when all I have time for is practicing mundanity! And the only reason I'm stuck doing it, is so we can do it again tomorrow!"

Me: "Just... Listen.

Is it worth the risk? The possible failure. The end of what you can be reasonably sure about. The potential of disappointment from people. The finality of realizing you can't actually make it. The loss of the possibility.

Is it worth the end of who you are?

Is it worth dying for?

...well?

Is it?"

Myself:

[the end]