Returning, Remembering

If walls could talk, would they tell the stories meant to be hidden secrets?

Would I find the echochamber of your chorus, as I always have?

Would my present reality cease to exist with the conjuring of your spirit, dancing with each word.

If walls could talk, would I run from them- to run from you? To run from the absence of your presence?

My body hides inside my skin pulling away from the surface.

Running from the memory of your touch.

Running from you seems to be easier than missing you has ever been.

My deepest desire is to fill your face with the smile it once held.

To fill your heart with joy, your life with love and laughter.

And here, these walls fill me with the deepest knowing of the taste of lonliness.

These walls, that mock my pain, that repeat the chorus of your love, have become a prison.

A living hell in which I am cursed with the rememberance of what a blessing it is to be held in your arms.

There is no place that you have not been, that you have not touched, inside of who I have become.

There is no place safe from the presence of your absence.

I wake in the night, to the coldness of solitude and yearn to hold you, so I pour tea instead.

As the morning light approaches, I somehow remind myself that each day has begun in much the same way, and has passed equally so.

I rise and I rest, as each day spends itself wisely, I have spent my time pouring myself into unfillable glasses, unsolvable problems,

unreasonable tasks, to avoid being still enough to hear what these walls would not stop screaming.

Even as I drown them out, you are in every room.

Hidden deep in corners, in the nuance of a strangers voice, in the gaze of a lovers eyes.

You have been every intimate moment, and every ounce of pain.

You have been the soundless sound that began the Universe of my experiencing.

And these walls, they will not let me forget.

They force me to remember, they are not you.

They scream at me to stop the madness, to be still enough to make wiser choices.

They beg me to know the difference in a whisper as it passes across lips that aren't yours in the dark.

I spent too may years ignoring the walls, watching my body, my life, become a pile of ashes from which I have been required to rise.

And yet, from the smoke still rises the signal of your touch.

The permanent imprint of my life.

There is nothing that has escapsed the eclipse of your celestial body.

The magnitude of your gravitational pull, immeasurable.

I have felt far from where I belong tending to the duties I was told were mine.

Handed to me with the expectation of perfect performace.

Without the grace you provide.

In completing these tasks I have become someone I do not recognize.

The farther from myself I become, the farther from you I feel.

The deeper the knowledge becomes that it is time to sit in the stillness and face what it is to hear you again.

Running from you only brought me face to face with everything I never wanted to be.

Running from you brought me to my knees.

On my knees, begging for the walls to stop,

for you to return,

for your love to be what enfolds me at the end of the day.

At the end of every day.

And on my knees I’ve prayed.

I've prayed when I didn't think I had hope left.

When I thought love was a lost cause.

When the days seemed too heavy to bare.

When I wasn't sure tomorrow was for me.

I heard you in the walls then too.

I just didn't know it was you.