Are you coming or going? I don't know, both.

So I collected my thoughts and my blessings, folded up my ambitions and aspirations like shirts and pressed them all into the geometric confines of a rectangular suitcase. Gripped the handle and pulled it down the hallway, down the stairs, found a place in the trunk for my zippered box of everything.

And as I sat in the terminal with my ticket and my eye on the clock, counting departures and arrivals; As I sat there, watching strangers collide with their loved ones, I realized that maybe it’s not so much about me.

That maybe it’s not so much about what I could do if I had more time or more words. Maybe it’s not about thinking or breathing, even. Maybe it’s bigger than that. Maybe it’s more about being a vessel. Maybe it’s about projecting more than myself, stepping outside this egocentric mold we’ve all grown into. Maybe it’s about appreciating the universal nature of the things I see around me.

And when I see two people embrace from across a crowded room, I’m not smiling because I can relate that to myself, I’m smiling because I can relate that to all of us.

So thirty thousand feet above the east coast, I collected myself and everyone else, smoothed out all the rough edges and found a place for everything.

14-15-18-20-8-5-18-14 12-9-7-8-20-19.

Four Letters and a Purpose

In every fractured moment, cross-sectioned and classified into separate components and factors, I can see the webbing that strings it together. And in every ray of light, sent from the sun and refracted through atmosphere, I can feel the warmth of our connection. And I feel it from the confines of my bed, see it in the vapor that blurs the bathroom mirror, and know it when I hear the latch click and the tumblers trip behind me on my way out into a day that is supposed to be spring.

Because back then every number had a curve and divided evenly between the two of us. Because back then we spoke in lyrics one of us had written, and we didn’t have much else to say. We spent most of the summer on the interstate, plotting a course from one concert to the next – harmonizing the hell out of each and every syllable and talking about how neither of us cared that the smoke might ruin the upholstery.

And now, in another even year, I am further from either of you than I thought I would ever be. Here in the ohs and eights, I am closer to what I wanted, further from what I knew, and more excited and more scared than I could’ve ever hoped to be.

It’s funny what two years will do to the sparks of friendship and the promises you make within it. And it’s funny what a month can do to your heart. So we’re scratching at the surface of most of it now, dealing with what we’ve got and what we had and why it maybe just makes sense. She’s fading and you’re coming in clearer every day. And even though I lose both of you to different area codes, that gap doesn’t seem so far. Even on a drizzly Friday.

It’s funny what I’ve become, yeah. I guess she was right. The even years are always better.