I didn’t expect it to work. I openly admit that I thought it was utter bullshit. But after spending the past 48 hours sobbing my heart out, I was willing to try anything to slow the deluge.

He spoke to me in his soothing timbre, slow and gently, as if to a child.

”Okay, we’re going to try something cool. Put your laptop to the side, and just breathe. In through nose, out through your mouth.”

“Go ahead and do that a few times. And see if you can feel anything. I’m going to send you some healing energy in about thirty seconds.”

As instructed, I closed my eyes and breathed. And then cried even harder. I’m talking, straight up wailed like I was at a goddamn funeral. Damn. Fuckity fuck.

“Did you feel anything,” he asked.

“Yea. I’m very wet. Errrmmm, my cheeks are very wet,” I said. Jesus..

He laughed. “Ok, that’s your pain. You have some darkness around you. It’s not yours. Under the hurt, you’re all light, power, and purity. Breathe.”

I closed my eyes, took more breaths, and let his voice wash over me like a wave. “Ask me for help, and I’ll help.”

I didn’t make a sound, but pleaded for him to take the pain away if he could.

“Again,” he said. “Be direct.”

I took a steadying breath. And let my whispers fill the room. “Give him my pain. Let him bear the weight of it. I need my power back.”

After five minutes of repeating this, it felt like my blood had been spiked with a very groovy sedative. The crying stopped, the twisty feeling in my stomach ceased to exist. Something had been released.

I fell back on my couch, nearly giddy with relief, and wanted to ask for a cigarette. (I don’t smoke).

Dear M-

After a few dozen discarded sheets of paper, I found myself left with an aching hand and exceedingly terribly penmanship. Basically, just a stack of scribbles and nonsensical rambles. So, I compromised with a half typed, half handwritten letter.

We're meeting in a few hours. It may be emotional. It may be awkward. I may be overthinking. That's all okay. And despite all of that, I will have given you this letter so that the message is uninterrupted. Don't let me steal it back. It's important for me to give you a tangible expression of how I feel right in this moment.

Maybe you'll read this letter again and again, turning it over in your hands and letting my words take shape in your mind, and when you do that, it will make you smile. Good. That's good.

Okay, enough stalling. Here is the crux of what I wanted to say:

You're an exceptionally easy person to love. Being with you has brought me immeasurable joy. (No, this isn't a declaration of love. Take a breath. But ... you should know that it's inevitable. A mere heartbeat away or an arduous thousand miles away, loving you will undoubtedly happen.)

That's quite a vulnerable thing to say, isn't it. But I know myself well. This type of feeling doesn't come about every day. This is rare. And whether you reciprocate or not, well, it doesn't matter. It's still a beautiful, blessed thing to feel something so deep and true.

No pretense. No expectations (for now). Just the simple truth. You, M, are a slice of goodness that I want to hold onto in an often gritty and cold world. And my dear heart aches when we're not together.

I'm not the author of this, but it's one of my favorite passages. And it reminds me of you.

"Nothing compares to your hands, nothing like the green-gold of your eyes. My body is filled with you for days and days. You are the mirror of the night. The violent flash of lightning. The dampness of the earth. The hollow under your arms is my shelter. My fingers touch your blood. All my joy is to feel life spring from your flower-fountain that mine keeps to fill all th epaths of my nerves which are yours." -Frida Kahlo

Yours.

L

She squinted through her glasses at his quiet, studied form, taking tiny but significant steps across the garden. It didn’t take long to get to him. A polite cough chirped out to catch his attention but he didn’t look up and over at her.

Despite the cloud of smoke over his bent head, like a grey halo, she sat a few feet away. Ten seconds later, she shimmied the skirt of her long dress with her across the length of the oak bench, even closer.

He breathed a deeply impatient sigh, and eventually looked her way.

“Hi again”, she whispered.

High above the banks of the mighty grey river, cars weave and speed and twist through the course with all the fury of a tidal wave approaching. Even higher above on a hill, sits a little blue house with two big windows, standing witness like God’s own set of eyes.

Below, they charge themselves forward, freewheeling and high full of arrogance, as it so typically goes. Despite the cautionary signs marked at every quarter mile, warning of the dangers, it’s more of the same on a rainy December morning. And amid the outcries of disbelief and anguish, the little blue house stands by silently, as if saying, “I told you so.”

The crash is a fatal one. Into the cold, dark river it goes, they go. Mangled pieces of steel and blood, all wrapped together, sinking below the fast-moving current. A crying shame, really. Another unavoidable wreckage finding its final resting place at the bottom of the mighty grey river while the little blue house stands guard, watching it unfold.