familiar

         You ask me what moves my soul and I am thinking about miles of raspberry fields that smell of sticky sweetness and the crisp shiver of sour a couple weeks before a single touch will cause them to stain my fingers.

         Of a crimson fire over the waters at Birch Bay as the sun sets and the silhouette of birds appearing like speckles in the horizon until closer, closer they fly; or an afternoon sun on the underside of tree leaves until it all looks silver and the hazy glow of violets and wheat fields alongside the road.

          Or maybe the smell of a small-town bookstore with its creaky floors and rows and rows of classics and art and poetry and all the words I never knew how to say. Or standing at the water's edge at low-tide and feeling the living things burrowing into the sand beneath my feet, breathing, and waiting. Shimmery water reflecting an early morning light as I spend a day on the boat, sails catching the wind, my fingers dangling in the water and I can't help but think how strange this all is, how beautiful.

        It all moves me, the way we put up walls because we've learned to be cautious and afraid, but every day we are out in the burning sun chipping them down one piece at a time, the way we argue and are insensitive and still have so much to learn, but in correlation, the way we crawl out of our hiding spots and we whisper apologies because none of it matters anymore and we just want to be close again, this way it all seems worth fighting for. Our messy humanness and the glaze of weariness in stranger's eyes, the glaring smiles and facades, the way we learn to listen in the silence because this is what it means to fall in love with your eyes closed.

        Once again slipping into the lilting language of my birth place, re-discovering words I'd thought I had forgotten, like vertraut, which in German, is to say, familiar. Hearing it for the first time that day and me, all nerves and smiles, thinking how it was the smallest thing, but it felt like setting down my bags and opening the windows.

        I've been experimenting with cooking and finding recipes from Italy, which has been my longest obsession, and picking basil and eating it raw to taste the bitter sweetness; getting a plate from the cupboard to fill it with slices of toasted sour dough and poured-over balsamic and oil, black pepper and hints of garlic, and in these tiniest of moments I think, this is it.

          I am a mosaic of emotion these days, all freckle-faced vulnerability and wide-eyed gaze as if I am holding a newborn and I am not quite sure how to place my hands, how to not break something so precious and fragile. This gentle reassurance of you hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.

       Living fiercely. Holding every moment and calling it grace, this open-palms sort of living. These days, I am learning to let go and trust that the water will hold my weight and I can put my head back and I won't drown.

         I walk the streets of this town in the hazy dusk and there is a tightness in my throat because this place is beginning to feel like my favorite sweater, all worn in and hugging my skin. I am settling into something woven into the seams of today and what is this? It's lingering on my tongue as if I am afraid of whispering it, but it's true,

       Home and familiar.

       I am no longer running, and this, this moves me the most and when did it happen? When did it begin? I think this is what healing looks like.