House of Moratorium

If things had been different... Such an innocent phrase, naive, used by both the young and hopeful, and the tired and empty. If things had been different, maybe I wouldn't be the latter. Maybe I would be looking ahead to the shining future of a young professional; "I'm a writer!" She says, with all the unearned confidence of a lamb masquerading as a tiger. But it wouldn't matter how many wolves licked their lips, she would persist. The world nothing but her oyster, her deep sea diving suit comprised of the ring on her finger and a four year degree in a field that doesn't pay unless you never ever stop swimming. If things had been different...I could see it, all of it, steadily waiting on the horizon line. If the affair never happened, if the strokes never struck down my father, if my heart didn't break every day for a decade feeling my mother's resulting resolve and desperation, if they had chosen to to tell me sooner that my conception was ...

there was a year when the earth went to war with itself, the ground opened wide to swallow the pines and creatures of chaos leapt out of the sand. all that they touched was corrupt, bats crawled on their bellies and birds began to fear the sky.  the earth went to war with itself, and nothing was sacred; the Grand Canyon bled from its callouses and lumber cut down men. soil seeped poison that spread like cancer, Redwoods shriveled, fading along with the proud belief in their own immunity.  land swallowed land, forgetting it's purpose; devouring itself to remember. the year the earth went to war with itself, two sides did not do battle for the whole, But the whole lost to two sides.

And I fall in love everyday with the ones who are good, not because they "have to be"...but because they are . Not because of stained glass or a preacher's pulpit, not because they fear the punishment of a misstep, or their father's furrowed brows, but because the colors of their soul don't allow them to shine a n y  o t h e r  w a y I fall in love with wishing I  w a s  o n e  o f   t h e m