To love is to live.

With finger outstretched silently, I reached into the night.
Summoned by my pulsing warmth, a moth took break from flight.
I studied the moth for all it was, enamored by the thing,
But as I began to express myself, the moth had taken wing.
I stood there lonely for a moment, in company of the moon,
the simple beauty of the insect had moved me,
despite being here and gone so soon.

One of little faith,
Poorly you did fare.
You set your heart upon a path
And never made it there.

You sway your hips when you walk away from me. I see the emphasis you put into each step; you transfer the motion to your hips rather than your knees. You think I will find this sexually attractive. Woman, I am blind to these nuances.
There is a light behind your smile: a studio light. You straighten your upper lip when you grin so I won't catch a fleeting glimpse of your prominent gum line. You restrain yourself; you present your perceived best; hoping this will be appealing to me.

Woman, the only way you could ignite my interest is by shamelessly exposing the ugliness you try to hide from me. I have seen a lot of pretty women. You are nothing exotic to me. What is exotic to me is seeing your vulnerable, disgusting humanity slip out and scatter all over the floor like a snapped pearl necklace. Seeing you flustered as you scramble to pick up all the beads: each passing second adding another degree to your burning shame. This would make you stand out to me.

I am dead. My self is spent. If you're looking for a person he has long since been evicted.

Erroneous– and worn upon,
One's deep thoughts do lead one on,
Like mischievous wisps of tobacco smoke
Evading the lips they do provoke.

I have found Emma. She is in me. She is out of me. She is around me. Emma cradles me in the ever-marching line of time.
I have wasted so many nights grieving over my loss. Over the loss of her. but Emma isn't lost. We were one. My half lives on, and hers too. Separated, we are whole apart.
We are whole apart. That sounds fantastic.

I have found something that makes me feel alive. A soothingly physical hobby that whisks the concentration from my mind and drops it onto the deck of a longboard.
It feels good. When your adrenaline is pumping and you're focused on getting your posture just right, you really can't focus on the things that be-grieve your soul.
I wish my board had a name. Definitely not Emma though. This is my new woman for the time being. I ride her as I please, and she brings me no grief. I don't love her, but I enjoy her company very much. We're on an adventure together.

Every day is a game of tug-o-war between the worries and resignations going on in my life.
It's been a while now, since Emma left me. I know a lot of men my age are divorced. I'm not special in my situation.
Isn't it absurd, when you stop to think about it, that so many people suffer the exact same thing, each account of it entirely unique and yet all-too-familiar?
I could describe my feelings to a multitude of kindred divorcees, and they could relate on the surface, but really, my only kindred is Emma.

I don't even know how Emma is doing. We haven't talked since our last talk. I love her so much, still, however we severed ties completely that day. Almost surgically. It was a simple procedure, in action. Her sister merely came the day after, gathered her things, and that was that. I mean, yes, there were the legal things, of course. But we exchanged tersely, business-like. It felt like, rather than talking to my soul-mate, it was a representative for her, some suited woman speaking on her behalf, with cool, dry hands folded stiffly on her lap.
That interaction was entirely different from the raw anguish I released when I was left to myself each night. When the hot tears had been exhausted, when my head throbbed from the heaving and sobbing that left me feeling spent and empty, I was thinking about soul-mate Emma. I think my body has immunized itself to that sort of visceral reaction, now. But there is that dull pain I still get in my heart. It's like dysthymia. It doesn't wretch my innards with suffering, but it's a bastard nonetheless. It prods me rudely throughout the day. And once I'm reminded, it likes to nag at me, gently, but the persistence lessens my overall quality of life. I don't feel suicidal anymore, but it's almost like this new way of aching for Emma has even robbed me of the choice of suicide or not. It leaves me feeling like some sloughed shell. Emma shed me and carried on, unfortunately taking my will to live, with her.

I'm at the point where I know I can find someone else. I mean, it is possible. I think about it, and tell myself: "it's plausible." But I miss Emma. It's like some sort of handicap now. I don't want to feel this way anymore, it is a tired hurdle. A chronic physical ailment. The needlessness is the worst part of it. Emma plays absolutely no part in my life anymore.
Emma is like the scene you see the morning after a party, when things are sorely out of place, the excitement is a dull memory, and you know that what you experienced is never going to happen again. Everyone just wants to go home and leave the deceased site. But you can't. It was your party, and when you're alone, and the frank light peers in through your window, you have to pick up all the pieces and dwell on each one.
Sometimes I just get angry at her, as silly as it sounds. I tell myself, she robbed me. She robbed me from ever feeling that way about a woman, ever again. I spent that on her, and she left me. I know it's immature. But my feelings sometimes get desperate like that. I feel like an upset little kid who had to leave the carnival early. Getting angry at her just pushes me back to feeling defeated, however. Because, no matter what I feel, she's gone and she's a dead, fading experience and what we had is already forgotten by the universe.

I want someone new. I hate saying that sentence, it makes her sound like an old car that no longer suits my needs, but it's true. But unfortunately my disability and my distracted, hesitant attention is an undesirable combination. I know I could do it. I could build something new, but it takes years. Emma took 24 years. No one is willing to put 24 years into something that's second-hand. Maybe someday, God will guide some woman to me out of pity, she may be equally resigned, or just patient and slightly alien, but until then, tug-of-war.

Someday Never Comes

The beats of this song remind me of my heart when I was first astonished that something as exquisite as the woods around us found me just as appealing. We had a Southern dream going on. The day we strolled along the creek was July's magnum opus of 1989.

The late afternoon sun filtered through the dust stirred up by our feet. It glowed through the air and bounced off of the leaves and the surface of the water. It twinkled playfully, like your eyes as you looked at me. I looked back at you, and my restrained smile broke out. You were beautiful. Always have been. I took your hand, and we stumbled along the side of the creek. Your fingers grasped mine with each bold step. Each squeeze of your palm would zing through my arm and down to my stomach where I would feel a hundred elated butterflies. My heart would skip a beat each time.  Stabilizing something as wild and vibrant as you exhilarated me and calmed me. Being your safe place made me feel safe.
   Following close behind you, I remember catching the scents of the forest mixed with your sun-baked hair. It smelled so perfect. The smell of a woman and nature. No perfumer could design a better smell than our creator had in that moment. It must have been what Adam smelled when he first held Eve close to him. Until that moment, I had never thought that something could be simultaneously innocent and erotic. You brought a lot of first realizations to me.

You were the definition of content to me. You were the definition of humanity, of love, of respect, of honor. Of happiness.
I miss you some days. I wish I would be relieved, but some days never come.

From bad things come good things. Every action has a reaction.
I was pondering the idea of mantras recently. I wondered what mine was. I gave it some thought, and a recurring, similar thought I seem to have when things don't go my way seems to be "Good things always come from bad things." So I suppose that's my mantra.
Is "good things always come from bad things" a logical statement though? It would seem so. If you cut your head falling off a bike without a helmet, you learn to wear a helmet next time. That's good. If your relationship failed due to a problem, you can go into the next relationship stronger and wiser. That's good. Hell, even a terrorist attack brings a community closer together.
I wonder if you could say that good and bad are equal and opposite. It would imply that bad things come from good things, too. Is there a bad reaction if a man and a woman nearly perfect for one another get married and live happily-ever-after?
Who knows.