Saturday, August 26, 2006
A Haven for My Hope
God, how do I leave this place? This place that saved my life? This place that wrapped its Island arms around me and held me as I shook and cried and vomited despair from every pore? How do I leave these people who are so much strangers and so much family? How do I get on the ferry tomorrow and know I won't have this place to escape to next week when real life and all the leaving and those damn ghosts bring me to my knees?
I hold on to a summer I will never get back. Why is it I am always being asked to let go? Why can't anything good just continue?
Against my chest I hold the sunset walks along rocky shores and overgrown fields. Inside my suitcase I pack the games of late night scrabble and that crazy barn dance. With such care, I handle the memories of those mornings that I clung to the sides of my bunk bed willing myself not to throw up as images of Him and Her sent waves of nausea through my body. Oh, those mornings that seemed impossible until I walked outside and sat on a dew drenched picnic table and inhaled the oxygen from the surrounding trees and allowed the a.m. sun to carry me. Protectively I hover over the Bible Boys and their wild pool jumping while I laughed in the hot tub. In a back room of my heart I store each day, evening and afternoon filled with the music making that reminded me of why I love to sing and why music is my surest path to God. Beneath a blanket of joy sits every moment spent with my trio, voice soaring, my heart healing. I tuck into my pocket the office... the 1 a.m. viewings of Greys Anatomy with my feet roasting on the baseboard heater and a basket of walnuts in my lap, my desk, the mess, the dog. On my sleeve I wear every first that I've had and every day that I healed and every friend that I made. Like a cloak, I wrap around me each hot shower I took, that lasted as long as I needed, to cry and cry and cry. Oh, the brilliance of emerging out of that steamy bathroom late at night, tears spent, left only to sit on the chapel steps and pray for Something Bigger Than Me to help me get through it. Within my soul rests the stars I wished upon, the cricket chorus, the bonfires that made this a magical summer.
How do I leave the place that gave me the strength to move on?
It was here that I discovered what I love to do again. It was here that I remembered why I am strong. It was here that I found a part of me that had gotten so lost. It was here that I woke up and saw that it was HIS loss, silly boy. It was here that I began a dialogue with a maker of poetry so true that I forgot to feel alone. It was here that I befriended, again, Spirit. It was here that I left behind my twenties. It was here that I concluded that walking away from Real Estate was the right thing to do. It was here that welcomed me, heart broken, and is sending me away, heart full.
To say I will miss it would be to diminish how this place has changed me.
So I say thank you, sweet Island, for I am changed.
Thank you, sweet summer, for now I'm whole.
I hold on to a summer I will never get back. Why is it I am always being asked to let go? Why can't anything good just continue?
Against my chest I hold the sunset walks along rocky shores and overgrown fields. Inside my suitcase I pack the games of late night scrabble and that crazy barn dance. With such care, I handle the memories of those mornings that I clung to the sides of my bunk bed willing myself not to throw up as images of Him and Her sent waves of nausea through my body. Oh, those mornings that seemed impossible until I walked outside and sat on a dew drenched picnic table and inhaled the oxygen from the surrounding trees and allowed the a.m. sun to carry me. Protectively I hover over the Bible Boys and their wild pool jumping while I laughed in the hot tub. In a back room of my heart I store each day, evening and afternoon filled with the music making that reminded me of why I love to sing and why music is my surest path to God. Beneath a blanket of joy sits every moment spent with my trio, voice soaring, my heart healing. I tuck into my pocket the office... the 1 a.m. viewings of Greys Anatomy with my feet roasting on the baseboard heater and a basket of walnuts in my lap, my desk, the mess, the dog. On my sleeve I wear every first that I've had and every day that I healed and every friend that I made. Like a cloak, I wrap around me each hot shower I took, that lasted as long as I needed, to cry and cry and cry. Oh, the brilliance of emerging out of that steamy bathroom late at night, tears spent, left only to sit on the chapel steps and pray for Something Bigger Than Me to help me get through it. Within my soul rests the stars I wished upon, the cricket chorus, the bonfires that made this a magical summer.
How do I leave the place that gave me the strength to move on?
It was here that I discovered what I love to do again. It was here that I remembered why I am strong. It was here that I found a part of me that had gotten so lost. It was here that I woke up and saw that it was HIS loss, silly boy. It was here that I began a dialogue with a maker of poetry so true that I forgot to feel alone. It was here that I befriended, again, Spirit. It was here that I left behind my twenties. It was here that I concluded that walking away from Real Estate was the right thing to do. It was here that welcomed me, heart broken, and is sending me away, heart full.
To say I will miss it would be to diminish how this place has changed me.
So I say thank you, sweet Island, for I am changed.
Thank you, sweet summer, for now I'm whole.
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