I leave for a year abroad in England in mere months.  A running theme, lately.  The notion that this will all be even more thrilling than I'm anticipating.  My lightning-veined excitement will help these calm, simple, farm town days pass.  Yet I still need to extract all I can from my time home. 

Ah!  The drive home!  It's as if with broad strokes, the landscape was painted just for me.  The sun was out, warm and heavy, making sweat beads roll off my skin.  I let the windows down, let the breeze tangle my hair.  It was autumn in reverse as the browns, still slowly dissolving, gave way to green.  Dandelions, the very pests I once used to hunt with grass-stained knees, ponytails and sweaty browed determination, dotted yards and fields.  How could I ever loathe them?  Crush them and rub them between my fingers until I was stained with yellow film?  They grow without apprehension, no cautious maintenance with chemical spritzes and silver edged clippers.  The rich, deep red barn.  The curves of the road that I know even more than I know the curves of my own body.

Those around me are frantic, their faces twisted with worry.  But me!  Calmness...certainty.  Yet another day I woke with a grin.  Sat up, looked out the sunny window, and sighed.  My existence is perfection, today.

How did I ever concede?  How did I ever call anything else love?  How did I ever numbly bump through each day without these stars behind my eyes?  How did my lips ever fold into a frown?  What is a frown?!?!  I've forgotten what they feel like!

Oh, if I could attribute this to a higher power, I gladly would.  I've cleaned myself of silly notions of an oil geared world, purposefully synchronized bits turning with reason.  But this!  It seems so beautifully contrived, so masterful, that I must stop, frequently too, and remind myself of its perfection.  All the thoughts that spring to my mind are cliche.  Beautifully cliche though, because how gorgeous is it that everything I'm feeling has been felt by others in their moments of love ecstasy?  It's kind of like the charm in uttering marriage vows that millions before, some the greatest, strongest lovers of their time have uttered.

I can't see the world in terms of anything but beauty.  If it's sunny, I let the rays soak through me...into me.  If it's cold, I feel the chills in my bones, thank the goosebumps that trace along my arms.  If it's raining, I let my hood down and let the drops fall, trickle down my face.  Frizz my hair.  I thought, perhaps, I just had this recent fascination with the weather and how it affects my moods.  Now, though, I've realized that no matter how grey, chilly or dismal it is outside, I close my eyes and literally *feel* each second of it. 

Sssiiiggghhh!

With sleepy eyes, I robed myself in pink fluff and sat, legs crossed, in front of the spotty mirror.  I cracked open the bottle, same as always, to paint my flaws with slops of porcelain.  A dark speckle under my eye stood up, drew in my gaze.  I tried to brush it away...then smudge it away...rub it away.  And nothing!  I leaned in and squinted. 

A freckle.

My heart, she jumped and my eyebrows furrowed.  I lost myself there, a tiny identity tragedy.  Twenty years of this same, fragile face and there is a crevice, one in plain sight!, I have just discovered.

What more is there, knotted beneath?

I found old journals today, some from when I was a skinned kneed 10  year-old and it broke my heart- the cruelty of this world.  Of my world, my past.

Life is shorter each day- don't forget it, self.  The illumination, the oh-so-overused notion of me being idealistic is fading, perhaps (and hopefully) only momentarily.  That feeling is creeping inside of me.  That brick-in-the-stomach, sick-in-the-stomach realization that I'll never be all of the people I want to be.  The shuddering uncertainty of the lives I never chose. 

Am I a naive, dreamy-eyed girl whose woman will shake her head and grin, saying "Oh, to be young and stupid again!"?

I don't know.  I don't know...I don't know...I don't know...I can't know.  And while this frenzied uncertainty used to excite me, in this moment it angers me.  Makes me wish that I could just outstretch my arms and twirl under a bowl of glittery light balls again.  Makes me wish I could remember this very moment, this ever-so-quickly fleeting second instead of bothering my head with anticipation of the next.

"If you're not in a nourishing environment, you will die."

Remember this.  Remember her, Joy, and the beautifully sure, calm and aware aura that lit up behind her eyes.  That lights up behind her eyes.

I envied them, those two close friends, their raw scrummaging.  The frenzy of their minds' hands.  Digging, digging, digging.  Embracing each second.  Feeling it, knowing it.  Creating it- their smiling children.

I have been...I am!...more alive than I've ever been.  I must do more than feel it though. I must be it, understand it. Reach, stretch, grow!  Celebrate.

So I danced.  I looked up to the sky as she poured her melted crystals on me, gave the heavens a pretty smile.  Let them wash me away, trickle reality from my cheeks, my brows, myself.  I opened my mouth wide, felt the cool raindrops plop into my throat.  "Brittany," I said, my eyes wide and grinning.  "We're alive!"  She took my hand and we fell into the cool, sticky mud, our knees digging tiny reminders of our existence into it.  "I don't want to die.  I'm starving, you know, and I don't want to die," she whispered.

We arched our backs, simply craved each drop as it soaked into our clothes...made them clingy, heavy, until we could no longer stand the weight of them.  I crossed my arms at my hips, lifted my arms to the stars and giggled with joy as I bared my breasts to the moon.  The rain fell harder just then, massaged them and kissed them.

I felt the earth- this good, good land.  Wiggled my toes into it, smeared it between my fingers- this good, gritty earth.  I needed it against me. My legs, my arms, my face.

I am alive! Once, only.  I must feed myself, nourish myself, find myself and my voice.  It's volume, tone, diction, inflections.  Then, at last, I can sing.