good stars above, this may be a ramble from my toes.
i don’t even know where to start. thoughts all in an uproar and something that feels like the fire i once knew is just… gnawing at my insides. in beautiful ways. cannot explain it. words. bah. so inadequate.
i love people. i mean it. every one of them. stars, there is so much beauty in people. they walk around thinking they are ugly, unloved, misfit, contemptible. they never are. never. not you. not me. not any of us.
more than anything, i adore talking to strangers. there is a freedom, an innocence in strangers. they don’t know you. you don’t know them. and in the safety of that illusion of anonymity, the labels and layers and impediments can be laughed away and oh, the sharing then!
i cannot share with you what i experienced tonight. words spoken in confidence. the trust of a stranger.
isn’t it ironic that so often, we’re more willing to break trust with friends, family, and loved ones than with strangers? what sad and sorry beings we can be at times. but even in this, breathtakingly beautiful.
i think i’m going to cry. i’m sure i often read as if i’m a lunatic. perhaps i am. it doesn’t matter. heh. i laugh through tears, right here, right now, and i say it doesn’t even matter.
i met a stranger tonight. and in a strange place, in our strange ways, and without any fear whatever, we shared the most personal and intimate tellings. we spoke of fear, and of pain, and of guilt and remorse and self-loathing. we spoke of the heaviness of trying so hard and feeling so often like failures. we spoke of the frustrations of wanting to do more, be more, and so often being unable.
and we spoke of personal griefs and tragedies. secrets whispered quietly, even with the veils that cloaked us, halting words… laying ancient wounds like sacred incense upon the common ground.
the smoke of that burning, ourselves, dancing in the pyre, crying and laughing and knowing it all the same. screaming to the stars and bowing our heads close together, there, in the tideline, letting the waters flow until all things extinguished, even ourselves, there was nothing to do but weakly smile, hug slowly, and shuffle quietly into our respective nights.
a moment. just one. and in it, all the horror and perfection that any of us could ever hope to aspire to… smoke and ashes, offered as the transitory things they are… to the quiet and infinite forever… sparks rising and winking out overhead… but our heads, they were uncovered, and we shared and were unafraid. liberated, jubilant, without fear… for a moment.
can i possibly convey how deeply it touched? how such moments are forever and ever amen all i ever, ever seek? i would burn every moment the rest of this life but oh, let me burn in these ways. waft me to the sky, spread me slow and languid over the horizon, again and again… but oh… just once more… let me rise.