under water train

Somethings do not change.

More things do.

More often than not, I'm fairly certain I don't live in reality. The jackhammers are raging outside on 34th st. My bank account is overdrawn and I'm broke as a beggar. It's a glorious existence. Friends feed me and work shows up every time I'm sure I won't have a meal. Ideas thread through me and talks of purpose and meaning are at every turn. We're all growing up here.

I'm finally old enough to understand I'm not old. Thrust into decisions and responsibilities and cutting answers from double edged questions.

The rum has been poured one too many times, but usually it's friendship over wine. So many steps from who I thought I should be, but I'm not complaining.

At the cross roads time after time. Identity. It was easy to do the right thing when it was thrust upon me. Easy to say no and step kindly into my pretty role of innocence. But hearts don't exist that way. No identity waited for me at the foot of the Empire. Only what's in my heart. So I've pulled out a lot of ugliness to name it. Not so pretty anymore, no. Not so good at never have I ever anymore.

But more full of grace and life, fury for life. Knowing this everlasting earth can't hold me. Auburn, I'm not coming back. That's terrifying. Oh sure, I'll see you now and again, but you probably won't remember me. Home is some strange far away word that I know is really in the making. I'm ready for my heart to have a home, to crawl into the palms of a forever who has a strong voice and a light laugh.

I remember what love felt like, and I'm not afraid of it anymore. I'm not empty anymore. I'm not broken or halfway anymore. There's a whole heart beating and bleeding for the groans of the people. But it's a whole heart ready to make a home in the deep croon of your promises.

Winter has passed. I smell like cigarettes and for once that's no literary allusion. I don't have pretty edges anymore, but it makes me easier to hold onto. I don't remember one or two or three nights, when I made a brown bag full of hot gold my friend to keep the morning away, walking down the city skyline, Brooklyn Bridge stumbling before my feet.

And I don't remember my first kiss anymore, but I do remember the first time I rode a tandem bicycle. And I remember the morning I woke up, breathed out the shit and decided to live.

Yeshua has been with me, and his deep heart is steady. And the fuzzy truths and the gray lines and the sultry partial lies are being carried out with the tide in the Hudson. All that's remaining is salt that tastes of the Father's glory. All that remains is a burning longing for more. No more questions of if I'm in the right place at the right time. I'm with the writer of my story, and there's no going wrong at His feet. We're writing a novel more shattering than Steinbeck, more lucid than Tolkien, more truthful than Salinger, more alive than Percy.

We're writing this story, and one day He'll name it.