Journey

This is an unmapped love, traversed
across uncharted terrain, over unknown waters
navigated by the northern stars blinking bright against
the night-dark of stubborn
tender
hearts.

It is not a road less travelled, but a path newly forged –

Road: Forked
(you go your way, I’ll go mine)
[separate ≠ alone]

– hands outstretched across the divide,
holding on over cut-skin sawgrass median and

not
letting
GO

but opening closed-grip palm-holds so the bird of opposite feather held there can fly.  Free.

This is aeleron love.  It is an hurtling exploration across blue-rain cloud-skies.  A long-flight plane ride filled with pre-boarding anticipation, cramped coach-class cocophanous claustrophobia giving way to

wonder-filled expulsion of relieved
held breath amazement
upon arrival at

Destination: UNKNOWN

This is a mountain-trail love, root-tripped and steep-dangerous, an ever-winding upward trek, leaving us winded.  Breathless.

It is a highway love, stretching its pavement into arms-thrown-wide open deserts, covered by the worn-blanket promise of eternal sky, leading infinitely onward, to

jungles.  tundras.  savannahs.

MOUNTAINS
(volcanic)

High we stand, cliff-face adventurers at the edge of the life-ledges we create, surveying the geological impossibilities we’ve traversed thus far, our paths marked with the footprints of Who We Once Were, our bodies wearing the blood-wounds of brambles climbed o’er, the sweat stains of exertion overwhelming, the scabbed-over scarred proof our tenacity.

Is that a salt tear that stings my eye when I look at you through their chameleon blue and see how far we’ve come?  (No.  It is the whip- wind sting.  The storm-water prick from electric air sky.)

Take my hand.
Survey our history.
Catch your breath.

Sate here, with me, your restless wanderlust.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

This is a travelling love, a constantly moving journey, most poignantly remembered in the quiet finger-interlaced open-arm moments when we stand/sit/kneel/lie –

–quietly, contemplatively–

– together.still.