It can't be life but death is not right either. How many years do our bodies stay comfortable? How many years pass without thoughts to challenge? Decades of I'm bored, I'm tired, I'm lonely. Nomads wandering an electric desert, riding on the backs of futons and sofa sleepers. These are our lost years.
Perhaps not lost exactly, if they at last offer the necessary impetus to....
We took the train up to the north shore on three separate occasions that January. There must have been ten of us the first night; lined up and stripping down. The Atlantic Ocean blew kisses at our naked skin, and though we shivered under that starless sky somehow it never felt cold. There is no thought in those first moments. Before the hoots of laughter and shouts of release, everything that is, is overwhelming physicality; every cell in your body remembering fully and at once the joy and pain of being alive.
The roar of the ocean washed over the wetness of our shrieking bodies. A noise like thunder, it was the promise of the spring to come and a memento of the one just passed. We could not help but reminisce. Long into the night we whispered our stories to the dying embers, fascinated by these tales as if we hadn't all lived through it together.
The thunder had started that early spring. By the time June laid down to die the humidity of her death rattle was tearing the sky. We were out in every storm. Sometimes on purpose; running through the rain and swimming in deep puddles. Sometimes it was seemingly by mistake; forgetting your keys or not starting the walk home until well after the sky had turned green.
Anyway, the point is just this:
Some years after that spring I grew afraid of the storms, but now, mostly I still chase them. And if I forget how to fight for it again, then I'll find my way back to the dark winter waters and remember how to love life more than I fear death.And every chance I get I'll put more distance between me and the lost years.
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