Friendship is an endeavor made frightening by failure.
Worse is failure unseen, unanticipated, unpronounced until it is deep.
I thought I was welcomed, embraced despite my green shyness.
I thought the net of conversation billowing around my ears like a quilt
was honey sweet toasted intellect and acceptance of all creative thought and soul,
I thought it was a miracle I stumbled into.
and a miracle they let me stay.
Rubbing my shoulder, sparking my laughter, sharing my secrets.
They let me adore them.
And I felt caught up and freed and Live In Color.
like my eyes were wide and the world was crisp
and breathing was easier because I was halfway flying at night with these souls.
And their beauty was delicious, and all beauty was delicious.
I thought if I grew and learned to soar in these wings they'd fashioned for me out of wooden words, so flawed, but my own inspirations, I'd never touch back down.
But enchanted nights fell asleep to groggy mornings and summer brought a haze of magic and melancholy and it was spotty trying to keep my feathered friends close. I could feel their drift like the pull of my own unrighteously dubbed scepter.
I didn't belong in lead.
But it didn't matter too much, my life was pulsating on something bigger than words, and before I could catch a breath I was running in love with my very own miracle.
I fit there in ways I couldn't have dreamed.
Like running into the ocean and discovering I wasn't just a mermaid meant to lace these waters, I was a particle of the mist, the breeze, the foam, the crash, the calm, the depth. Forever embalmed in a divinely perfect place.
I was in an "us" so deeply the comfort made me cry and ache at the thought of anything less close.
and one person meant the world.
one soul adored me.
oh heavens sweetness everlasting.
I could taste it, hold it, feel its shimmer in my spirit's skin and quiver through my veins.
My life was perfectly next to him, with him.
And I itched with anticipation
for endless days exactly this way.
I kept eyes on my fluttering friends.
Through a few seasons they darted here and there but never to my path.
Never even across it.
I wondered,
Had I been forgotten?
So quickly? So quietly?
Had I been sent off to a neverland in their fantastic minds where friends were not recalled or desired or needed?
Finally, I received a letter.
But while it held sharp recognition, it was not filled with words of relief.
I had not been forgotten by one.
Certainly when you ruin someone's life, they don't forget you.
Things of importance had "been afoot", as they say,
and unbeknownst to my green, green shyness, I had stepped into that miraculous net held by so many magical beings, and stood where fraying edges were daring to snap.
She hated me for standing there.
For not moving. For rubbing shoulders, and laughing, and flexing my wings and thinking I belonged.
With every word she unearthed the memories I would pace over and over for years to come.
Trying to find the million sparkling glints that could issue such discrepancies between her divining and mine.
Trying to scrub her hatred from my blood, devastated at its existence, broken by my part in her sorrow. Hating myself for those glints I'd never caught while it had mattered.
I let all my birds fly away.
And maybe someday I'll know some were the friends I believed, maybe someday I'll blame myself for not being brave enough to seek them out and ask.
But in these days I am not brave.
Unsteady from love lost or never attained, I am pathetically far from many beautiful souls, and unwaveringly close in the ocean of "us", swirling as an intended particle of everything.
Feeling God's kiss of meaning on my forehead, I am hoping.
For the ship's nets passing old and yet to come, to want me up in flight with my ocean.
