The Afternoon

I am facing you, and my chest is biting into itself, the way it does when my heart is too unfamiliar for my own good. I haven't written in so long, and my fingers feel old, like they've been hammering away at keys and keys without making anything worth reading.

http://jasonmraz.com/journal/2012/live-it-up-write-it-down/

Jason Mraz posted a great blog about his need to write. So I guess this is my own sad attempt. These days have been filled with so much movement — God, I am constantly moving, I am constantly moving — I have [so easily] forgotten what it's like to feel the earth sighing beneath my feet, how it feels to let the sun bathe your shoulders, how one smile can spring your heart right out of your chest (no matter how many precautions you've taken). How we — all of us — long to be loved in a way bigger than ourselves.

This is a tribute to time. To the way summer days stretch out beyond the end of the earth, to the way we feel happy in June, lazy in July, and nearly invincible when we find ourselves in August. The way our eyes spell infinity in different ways, the sound of guitar strings echoing against the night sky, the way we clamber over fences into forbidden lands, the way we drive with the windows down and wind whipping through our hair. Summer is a brief reminder of why we belong to eternity.

I can see September from here, and experience the last two months all over again: sweaty bodies piling out of school buses, construction paper littering the desks, the silence of staying after 6pm, playing The Civil Wars and running out of red ink. The screams of girls laughing, the shouts of boys playing tetherball, the reassurance found in friends sitting in empty classrooms. Life is too romantic for us to not be in love, all the time — don't you think?

We are all just beating hearts, suspended between the light and dark,
We are all just beating hearts, between the light and dark.