Heartbeats

I follow your heartbeat, your hoofbeats toward the sun
The sun, the moon, the blinding stars
The sand and earth and shining sky
The wind in sheets
The rain on rooftops
Slowly pounding down the sound
Slowly drowning out your name

The blue, the green they pull me closer
They bring me in and tear me down
Scatter my last ashes
Whisper my soul's secret aloud.
Strip me bare, shiver naked screaming bleeding
For one solid chance.

I howl.

My lips my feet my fingertips
Are made of sand.
My ears my throat between my legs
Shout forth hollow empty words
Draw me down and bring me closure
Open eyes and shut my chest
I'll gasp and grasp and hold it in
This, my song of longing and release.

Right.

"Shove another dragon down a hole."
Off this cliff again
Hold me, keep me, let me.
Close to safe, next to whole.
Dreaming syrup, changing with the leaves.
It's working, just now.
It's not easy, but is it ever?
So glad to be swimming with the current, letting it carry me downstream where it will.
One year later, learned so so much
About me, you, us and them.
About right and wrong and when to just keep my mouth shut.
About triggers, about how easy it really is to be that girl.
About the things that really matter.
Eyes crossed, a little constellation points the way.
I am cautious, and willful and thoughtful and joyful.
I am joyful.

"Please stop haunting me." I wrote. And am learning to be less surprised by the response.

Horses.

My endlessly tinkering and generally mechanically inclined spouse spent the better part of the last 2.5 days with his head under our toyota truck, trying to figure out why it suddenly wouldn't start. He tore a bunch of wiring apart, tested *absolutely* everything with his ohmmeter and ammeter. He thought he had it narrowed down to the alarm system, but he wasn't sure. He cussed and spat and threatened its family and still it would not start.

Finally, about 10:00 last night, he came in where I was packing last night to say "I have given up. I have tried everything, I can't make it start, so we have to take the bus." His 1981 VW bus does. not. go to Burningman. This was serious. "Let me look at it," I asked. "Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes helps."

He begrudgingly led me under the hood and showed me a couple of things and sighed heavily. I grabbed the keys and jumped in the cab to see what the ignition (or lack thereof) sounded like. When I turned the key, I noticed the low, flickering lights and that some things worked while others didn't. This looked like a classic electrical Gremlin that I had met with before. I jumped out and carefully persuaded him to replace the battery, "humor me," even though his gauges said it was perfectly fine.

He doggedly swapped batteries and I jumped back in the cab where *lo and behold* the thing started up instantly. He just stood a moment with his face in his hands.

This moment brought to you by the Rules of the House of God: "when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras."

Choice.

Walk a thin line, a fence between fields?
One gate or the other,
One place or another.
I could stay, you know.
I could give in to that urge to escape
Start over, all new, all in again.
Just let it all go.
Hold me here, hold me down, I keep walking my line,
Gaze fixed firmly on the horizon.

Summer rain.

I laid in bed curled in soft sheets
I threw open the window to let in the storm
I remember falling in love to this very music
The song of rain on the lush maple, the pavement wet from a thousand little licking rivers
I remember lying in another bed years away and thinking I could stay there, by your side for the rest of forever.
Wondering- would we click together, easy as if we'd never been apart?
Could this fire of passion burn bright enough to light the way through the darkest places? Could we lean on eachother, and learn and grow and live together? Would we share the world, or simply this moment?
Oblivious cars pass by on the streets outside, the clouds drum on, and moments have stretched into months and years and I am back in these sheets, in another lifetime, listening to the rain and thinking of you.
Listening to the rain, and still in love with you.

You or I.

I turn a cobbled corner and am surprised to find you here.
Not sure who has been following whom, again
But here you are.
I catch sight or scent of you here or there-
The tail of your scarf,
A whispered promise
A crumpled leaf with your watermark.
I catch up now and then, or you do
We do
And we tango for a moment
Dance a tangled waltz across a square.
I touch you with my fingertips,
Grasping cloth or hair
And find you made of iron smoke,
Magnetic ephemera, if there was ever such a thing.
We whirl in step a moment,
And then you're gone.
I am left standing alone by the river,
Your breath left on my skin.
Will we always meet and part this way?
Will I always be left to wonder when?
Will you ever whisk me away, or I you-
I'm not sure who chooses whom, I or Madness.
I'm only sure you'll always beckon from my own shadow.

Flow.

Mixing signals, cross a great divide
I have a hard time with intrinsic value,
I want to know what it means to me, and I'll warn you
Rules at odds are easy to circumvent.
Absolutes beg exceptions
And I can find a justification in my heart.
Dripping water calms me tonight,
And that feeling, like flying, soaring even
Flow in flight that makes my muscles ache for more
Lift me up, raise it up
This small sacrifice.
A few cells here and there- "does it hurt you?"
Of course it does.
Everything worthwhile has to hurt a little.