Refractive Light (Retold)

For me the draw and drag of writing is welcoming someone into the house of my spirit. A humble abode that is not often clean and tidy, but upon news of a guest I prepare with a reasonable tidy. Enough to be presumably clean, not enough to suggest the expectation of company. 

My house is lived in with my mass of milk containers piled in the hallway to the kitchen and dishes stacked, filling the sink. I dislike the look that gives, but I often find myself to busy to keep up with trivial tidings. My bed slept in. An understatement because that bed has seen me curse at night, seek the value of comfort and solace, that “turn in” feeling, that I can never find. But the scene of a mess of sheets and blankets strewn madly about remains. A hard fought trophy I push it out of mind because of insomnia or the voracious tossing and turning, yearning for a renewing rest, but somehow remains out of grasp. 

It’s my abode and I dislike the way that it reflects me. But the doorbell rang, an individual is ready to walk into my space. Assuming here to get at friendship, a sense of camaraderie, hopefully nothing undue.. I put on the face I expect them to receive. We chat and as the conversation evolves and devolves my shape and form wiggles and wabes, their shape follows suit in this strategic way of attack and defense to figure out the audience for safety, intimacy, and how deep we will be able to connect.   

I let you in. Parts of me started to bend differently, bend happily. You sat on the couch and it started to glow. A luminescence this soul abode needed. I have seen golden love turn into ghastly sand within my arms. A beautiful endeavor turned into a spiritual tenant and long term haunting. But I’m perhaps unjustly optimistic for new contacts to develop differently. Still, we dive into the mess of friendship, love, and the misnomers we’ve each come to know.

 

The conversation came to an end as the night grew late. We could have kept talking for hours, but the nagging list of responsibilities that tomorrow held in store brought the talk to an abrupt halt. I walked you to the door  and wished you well on the return to you're own souls abode and that the space reflects the beauty you are beaming with.  

I am left with a house cleaner than it was when the day began. Space and nightfall are now washing over me. It is sweet that I met a kindred spirit, but my issues with night remain the same.The last light of day is long past, the last light inside this house just walked out the front door. The sun’s warmth dissipates, leaving me with a cool air.  The silver silhouette of moon lit clouds as companions, my thoughts bright mighty, dark dreary, calls me to the patio to bask at the night unfolded. 

I write to pay homage to simple things seen too trivial, to beautiful things like a flash in a pan, that marvel momentarily drawing about goosebumps, big eyed stares, and unintended laughter hearty enough to draw a scared or panicked look from others.

The steadfast still of the night brings a tragicomic backdrop to my overactive night mind. It is certain indecision, moments of overbearing preempted with caution that turned a beating heart that bent the light around me, a force of affection affirming fate or some other holy force stock, a traction. Now such memories are covered in perceptual dust twisted heads down, feet up. Twisted out of shape so that all I remember is the smile that those times together used to bring. Nothing of the people that populated those memories. 

I breathe deep letting the cold night air in to dispense this line of existential questioning. The thoughts in part go back into the brain scar from which they came. The questioning sting continues: what went wrong to earn a long term silence, what social gaffe was so ghastly ignored to earn excommunication from an instance of love that verged on the holy. Haphazardly between extremes: leaps of faith met with safety, vulnerable differences forlornly shared, received in open arms, within the gamble of intimate trust sensitivities accepted in kind desire and warmth of spirit. 

Again realizing my internal profitless spinning, I run the next breath down to an uncomfortable t low and breathe in the night once more. I inhale mesauredly, a slow strong inhale from empty to full taking in the wash of the moon, the stillness of the world that I want to fight. This breath I hold with a mighty fervor expel further trying to dispense the existential deep dive I’m not trying to attend. It puts further lingering haunts back away where they stay for the night. 

I bring myself back to a neutral state of sense fullness and accept I have no remedy for the haunts that taunt and belittle me. Accosting fate, or what have you, I bring myself back to the sense of self I accept. Pulling from how my parents and brothers hold my in esteem, to the glories and faults of time I’ve seen, to the way I interpret this fickle experience I steel myself from the night watching and self unfolding long enough to get myself into bed. 

These matters I know are not put to rest, because I will see them the next night, and the following, but by grabbing a night’s worth of good rest, I’ll continue on with a leg up on my competition. And so it goes, so it goes, and so it will go.