#rekamohcs

[rekamohcs]

I want to share my soul with someone.

I want to hold it in my hands, bright and beautiful, colorful and magnificent, so that I might hold it up to the light and say, 

“Isn’t this cool?”

And I want someone to see it, to see me, to understand what I’m asking, and say,

“The coolest.”

[rekamohcs]

The grass is greener here,

because I am on the other side

(of my trauma),

but also because I have watered it.

-the grass really is greener on the other side

[rekamohcs]

[rekamohcs]

What is love?

(Baby, don’t hurt me, right?)

The delicate flutter of nerves gnawing at your belly on a first date. Sweaty palms, shy smiles, warm skin, soft kisses. Stealing fries from his plate at dinner, laughing when he swats your hand away. Offering the cherry on top of your milkshake as penance (he hates cherries – that’s why you offer).

Quiet whispers at midnight, stolen touches under tables. Inside jokes. Outside ones. Stealing the blankets and pressing your cold nose into his warm neck, smiling against skin. Listening to his ideas as they tumble out from between his lips, clawing their way into existence. Giving input when you can and support in the form of hot tea placed on his desk at 2am when he’s still at the drawing board. You end falling asleep alone that night.

Tears at 3pm when he hasn’t slept in two days and you have three meetings in the next hours. He snaps; you do, too. Making up the old-fashioned way – with tough conversations, hard discussions that build and break down walls simultaneously. Picking out a cat together (he’d rather have a dog, but he knows you’re both too busy for that right now) six months after you move in together (he loves that cat even though he won’t admit it). Planting a vegetable garden that dies in two months and crying at your dad’s funeral that comes too soon.

Perhaps love is all of these things. Perhaps it is none.

Maybe it’s giving the man on the street corner the lunch you had packed for yourself on Tuesday. Maybe it’s putting bird food out for the squirrels and picking up the can on the sidewalk after your evening run. Maybe it’s encouraging someone to drink water or offering your time even though you don’t really have any to spare. Maybe it’s simply existing, giving what you can without expecting anything in return.

Perhaps love is like a god – we may never know who it is, may never see its tangible form or understand it completely.

Perhaps we don’t have to.

Perhaps love is all-consuming, inclusive, and gilded into the fabric of every seam that holds this universe together.

What is love? 

(It is the center of your soul, and his, and theirs. The pillow on your bed and the wind that caresses your hair in Autumn. The light through the leaves when you’ve been lost in the forest so long that you can’t see the trees. It is you on your best days and you on your worst. It is every god that may or may not exist. It is us, and above all, it is inevitable.)

Baby, don’t hurt me.

[rekamohcs]

Healing

I have fought to be here, he thinks.

There are callouses on my palms from holding my blades and there are scars on my back from those who have challenged me.

There is sweat on my brow and sand in my shoes and wounds on my heart.

There are pages and pages of pain in my book, and yet, I am here, at the top of this mountain, even though the baggage on my back made it feel as if this climb was impossible.

The view from the summit was worth the fight.

He smiles, and the world blossoms.

[rekamohcs]

Joy

The thing

about

joy

is that it’s always there.

Omnipresent.

Sometimes

it’s bright and sugar sweet,

like cotton candy fingers and Ferris wheels on crisp Autumn nights. Clear skies

and glittering starlight, melted ice cream in fields of sunshine and lilacs.

Sometimes

it’s young and free,

like a swarm of careless laughter and blinking lightning bugs. S’mores and 

stories around campfires, hair tangled in the wind, loud music and coolers full

of questionable drinks.

Sometimes

it’s light and new,

like plush baby blankets, hand-sewn teddy-bears, toothless smiles and wet dog 

noses. Sightless kittens, the first rays of sunlight after two weeks of clouds, the

buds of Basil seeds popping up through soil.

Sometimes

it’s old and classic,

like farm houses and ancient castle ruins. Elderly couples in the front row at 

Sunday service, hands clasped together and in prayer. Homemade banana

breads that Mom bakes (the ones with extra bananas, the good stuff) to hand

out for Christmas.

Sometimes

it simmers,

hot beneath the surface. Raging to boil over and spill onto the counter-top, like

sweltering summer heat and melted chocolate on the dashboard of Dad’s old

Chevy. Heated skin and pink cheeks, soft presses of lips into sunburnt shoulders

and fingers in hair.

Sometimes

it’s dark and heavy,

hidden in the shadows beneath piles of snow after a heavy winter storm. A tiny

ember beneath piles and months of used, spent ashes. Burrowed beneath the 

blankets of a bed that hasn’t been made in weeks. Forgotten and lost.

The thing

about

joy

is that it’s always there.

Omnipresent.

Different shapes. Different places.

Different feelings. Different moments.

Different losses. Different loves.

Sometimes

it wears the face of a stranger,

but it’s always there

to hold your hand while you find your way back

home.

[rekamohcs]

Today my soul turned to me and whispered - “Take me to the place with the trees. Take me to the place where the world feels impossibly magnificent.”