It just makes me think about dynamics.

And the way that sometimes life is quiet and sometimes it's loud.  The way these voices collide in treble tones and sympathetic noises.  Makes me think about those times when a whisper does more than a scream ever could. 

Makes me think that sometimes shorter is better.  Sometimes saying less means more.  Sometimes it’s the silence that counts and that’s why I concentrate on the shallow breathing.

So we stand here, voices bouncing around these four walls, drowning in words way too big for us.  Squinting out at our futures, hoping that clichés fit the feelings and photographs capture the sunsets.  Stand here in the places we’ve made our own, losing our words and finding this balance between a smile and sadness.  We’re clicking our tongues off the roofs of our mouths, they’re adjusting mortarboards on their heads, and we’re all looking for something we’re not really ready to understand.

We’re talking loud, but it's all over our heads.

Looks like the weather held for them. 

They’ve made the choices, asked the questions.  Short dress or gown, bow tie or Double-Windsor knot.  Picked the earrings and the shoes, picked a date and some got the right answer.  Some got turned down or never got the courage to ask.  But the weather held.

Long enough for that synthetic click to capture a moment that will find its way into yearbooks and scrapbooks and facebooks.  Long enough for the arms to link and the fingers to interlace, for the pins to bisect the stems and the petals to grip the wrists.  Long enough for the flash of teeth and the soft fold of dimples.  Long enough for pictures and convertibles that will ruin the hair that required most of the afternoon.

So while the high school kids take their parents cars and a rented concoction of pressed black and white cotton, I’m feeling older and older.  When it’s my brother’s turn and then the girl next door’s turn and then maybe my sister’s daughter’s turn, that’s when I’ll feel it.  And I think it’s funny, how we never really notice time until it changes the landmarks around us.  We don’t notice it in ourselves or in those closest to us, but we see it when the old mall’s got new stores and when that old park becomes a housing development.

And then we say things like “Man, when did you get so tall?” or “Man, that tree didn’t used to fill the backyard!” and “So you’re what, a sophomore in High Sch- Oh, College?  Grad School?  Really?”  Act surprised like there aren’t any gray hairs and there aren’t any lines in the mirror.  Like the world hasn’t changed us, like it only turns for everyone else.  Act surprised like we somehow expected everything to stay the same. 

It’s one thing to hang onto what we have and hope that everything stays exactly the same.  Some people do that.  Some spend their entire lives fighting the hardhearted march of time and change.  But I just sit back, watch the kids in their fancy cars and Sunday-best, and hope that time makes me into someone you’d be happy with.

It’s a surrender, but it’s what I’ve got.

remainders

If life was mathematically sound, it would be a lot easier. 

If we could take our numerals and coefficients, raise them to coefficient powers and “let x equal all positive integer values,” it would be a lot easier.  Maybe it wouldn’t be easier, but at least we’d know that there were concrete, attainable answers out there. We could take our heart as a quadratic mess and as the variables approached infinity, we’d factor out the constants.  The breathing and the ventricles  contracting; the friendships and the feelings (doubt, hope, love, loss) would remain outside of the parentheses, and we would be able to see what works and what doesn’t. 

But you’d tell me No, the possibility of life is what makes it worth living, and that Finding the answers for yourself is growth.  And I’d tell you that I was tired of trying to imagine emotions quantitatively and I’d tell you that I was finished with all the possibilities.  Looking for something concrete and real, something that is a little more complex than five bubble-shaped options but a little less complex than what we’ve got. 

So I lie here, suspended between queen and twin-size.  Finished with one stage, I guess, and yet not quite ready for what comes next.  So I lie here, after all the hours in the lab and after all the standardized exams.  I’ve paid my parking tickets and all the library books are checked back in.  I’ve got a pen and an enveloped piece of paper that says Thanks for everything you’ve done, I wouldn’t be where I am without you.  And this talk of mattresses is metaphorical, but it works. 

Sometimes I think of life like an author would a book.  Think about all the exposition that forms the foundation of whatever the next chapter is.  I think about all of the symbolism and the right words for these intricate details.  The way I’m leaving so much of what I know to pursue what still seems a long ways away.  And I think about character growth and the kid I knew back in high school.  Think about who he’s become and why, think about where he’s gone and how.  Think about the big steps you take, and how they never really seem like much in the moment. 

So maybe that’s fitting.  Maybe life isn’t an equation.  Can’t be contained in a matrice or in a bell-shaped curve.  Maybe life isn’t a book, either.  Maybe life is more than words and numbers.  Maybe it’s just a collection of small moments that make up milestones.  And you just do what you know and try to see it in the best light. 

You know this story.  Of a tide that is rising (time) and hands that are holding (passion).  Unrequited or reciprocated, fleeting or boundless, whatever the form, you know this feeling.  And I think comfort stems from that knowledge.

This is the story of the static that envelops each and every one of us eventually.  It’s coming, and I can’t hold it off.  I know. 

I know the future’s coming; I just want a little more time with you.

Cross my fingers and close my eyes. Pray for rain and the night sky.

And I like to think that we’ve all got our combinations.  I like to think that we’re all collections of unique little details and interests that blend and mold into a voice and a face and a body.  Blue-eyed or brown, freckled or pale.  Short hair and long hair and no hair and then all of a sudden I sound a little bit like Dr. Seuss.

But really, I just keep thinking about the impact of order in our lives.  The timing and structure of every moment that somehow plays itself into a larger picture that only comes into focus in the curved lens of hindsight.  And we say things like “everything has a reason” and “all good things must come to an end,” but really we’re just trying to frame the complexities of life in proverbial phrases. 

If everything really has a reason, then there’s a reason you’ve got two middle names and I have one, and I don’t really buy that.  And if we’re spending our lives waiting for the good things to end, we’re wasting whatever we’re given.  I think there is beauty in simplicity and there is grace in everything.  I think there are ways to make sure that no good thing ever ends.

So you could say that I’m naïve.  Or you could say that I’m blindly optimistic.  You could say that carpe diem is trite and overrated and you could say that I should try to fit better into a box.  Maybe you’re right, but I think that we’re more than the sum of our parts.  Maybe you’re right, but I think that it’s better to be a little bit of everything than completely one thing.

Inhale and watch you shape the syllables with your mouth.  Watch the words stumble out over your teeth and slip over your lips. 

I know your hands because I watch them when you talk.   Think I could find happiness in the creases of those hands.  Think I could find love in the collision of metacarpal and marrow and keratin.  You press the joints until the carbon cracks and break into a smile.  Because you know what I’m thinking and the answer is yes.  A thunderstorm is as good of reason as any.

Exhale and wait for the exams to end.  Because the more we move forward, the more we stay the same.  I might switch cities and maybe I’ll have something to frame in a little while, but the routines are the same.  I will still make mistakes and I will still try to blur them with alcohol.  I will always think about the “what could have been” we both know is out there, but I will always come back to who and what I know. 

And if there really is such a thing as fate, I hope it makes up its mind.  If there really is such a thing as my future, I need it to find me soon.  If there really is a reason for any of this, I’m starting to feel like I need it soon. 

Because if there isn’t, I’m going skydiving.  If there isn’t a reason for the talking and the exhaling and the testing and the way your mouth touches mine, then I might as well fall out of an airplane, because I want to feel the impact of something.  If there is no fate, I’m going to push the limits of possibility.  If there isn’t a future waiting for me and if there isn’t a reason for anything, I’m going to stand here without my umbrella and kiss you as long as the sky keeps giving.  Because I can and because it’s real.  Because there are too many songs about aching and not enough about not having to.  Because it's water and heart I'm living on.

So maybe there are reasons, maybe there aren't.  And maybe there are limits, but maybe there aren't.  Maybe there are a thousand other hearts out there, connecting and detaching and searching and waiting.  Maybe there are soul mates or maybe there aren’t.  Maybe mine works with yours or maybe it doesn’t. 

I don’t know, I don’t.  I hope so.