I Found You Again

“In every heart there is a room
A sanctuary safe and strong
To heal the wounds from lovers past
Until a new one comes along”
And So It Goes- Billy Joel

My seventies girl once told me that she thought that most of my music sucked. I laughed and said seventies girl sucks too. She tossed her hair back, smiled and turned towards the sea.

We sat in silence and watched the waves roll in and out. As we sat there, our fingers intertwined I felt our souls smile and let my mind wander where it would.

Water gives life. It also takes it away. Wind and waves. I told her once that I could see how the ocean could become my mistress. The sounds of the sea called out to me and touched the wanderlust within. She took her hand and turned my face towards her and stared into my eyes.

I knew her thoughts before she spoke them and promised to take her wherever it was I went. “You are the song of my heart and what happens to you happens to me.” A soft kiss graced my lips and we sat again in silence.

We who had never known such happiness never knew that one day we would know such sorrow. It had seemed impossible that two people could meet under such circumstances as we did and not end up together. Signs and symbols serenaded our souls healing the scars of the past and opening up opportunities of the future.

Her presence made me stand a little bit taller and made my muscles a little bit stronger. In turn I taught her to relax and let another carry the load. Her burden didn’t have to be borne alone and when she finally let go I carried her effortlessly.

We were partners. We were friends. We were lovers. It is hard to write these words, ‘we were” when my heart says that they should read “we are.

Sometimes I head to the beach again and think of the days when we sailed together. The sounds of the sea call out to me and I think of that day when I spoke of my mistress the sea and wonder if perhaps the time has come to set sail again.

I stand alone on the beach and watch the waves roll towards the shore. I wonder about what lies beneath the surface and absentmindedly turn towards you but you are not there. A wistful smile works its way across my face.

Had you been there I would have mentioned the tsunami and how incredible the power of the ocean is. I would have talked about the secrets that it keeps and how amazing it is that one moment the sea can be calm and the next it is raging.

Water gives life. It also takes it away. Wind and waves.

The contradiction of the water as deliverer of life and death would have made for a great conversation. It fit us, this contradiction. We who “were” or perhaps one day “will be.”

“So I would choose to be with you
That’s if the choice were mine to make
But you can make decisions too
And you can have this heart to break”

I Found You Again

Somehow when I thought you had left my life forever I found you again.

Even now I am not sure how it happened. I remember being swept overboard and being tossed around by the waves, saltwater blinding my vision and choking the life out of me.

I remember sinking beneath the waves exhausted and spent but not quite dead.

The sweet siren song of the ocean depths called out to me and I almost answered but that fire in my belly wasn’t extinguished and the fight hadn’t been beaten out of me so I kicked my way back to the surface and fought the waves until I could fight no longer.

Found a piece of driftwood and held onto it and let the current take us where it would. Looked up at the sky and found our stars and our moon staring back at me and thought I heard your voice.

Thought I heard you calling my name and promised I would find you again.

Felt like a fool but figured if I had nothing but time to float I might as well find ways to occupy my mind so I closed my eyes and looked for my center.

Found you waiting there for me, took your hand and heard you promise to take it again if I could find you.

Opened my eyes, shook my head and swore I wouldn’t let the sun beat the sense out of me and floated some more.

Days turned into months and the current moved our life together further away until it felt so distant I wondered if it had been a dream.

It felt impossible to believe that what I remembered was anything more than a figment of my imagination. As the months stretched into years I convinced myself that it wouldn’t matter if I found you again because it had never been as good or as pure as I remembered it to be.

That made sense to me and I figured it would to you as well. Practical and mature people would recognize how absence makes the heart grow fonder and figure it to gloss over any challenges we had once faced.

Reality was what I should be looking at and it was clear I wasn’t because I knew that two people couldn’t be as my memory showed we were.

And then lightning struck and that puckish rogue life sent me out to sea again.

It Wasn’t Supposed To Be Like That…Or Was It?

The same water that had sent me overboard and tried to drown me so many years earlier did it again.  Somehow I was swept overboard again and forced to fight the waves but this time there was no siren song trying to lull me to sleep.

This time surprise was replaced by anger and I was too fired up to anything but find another way to swim to shore.

And that is when I found the biggest surprise of all…

You.

You were there. I saw you but you didn’t see me.

Watched you walk across the room and was amazed by how hard it made my heart pound. After all this time and all these years nothing had changed.

And then I understood what Rick meant when he talked about all of the gin joints in all of the towns in the world.

It felt like dawn broke inside my head and the sunrise melted all of the doubt that had lay in the shadows.

Wind and waves had forced us apart and now they had brought us back to the same place, but not quite together.

Not together because you didn’t know I was there. Didn’t feel me staring at you or see me try to melt back into the shadows because I felt like I was back in high school.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. We weren’t ever supposed to have found each other the first time, yet we did and we felt the chemistry between us almost immediately.

We weren’t supposed to lose each other yet we did. In some ways it felt like it happened as fast as we had found each other.

And yet just when I thought it was nothing more than a memory the wind and waves swept us back together in the same place and I began to believe that maybe there was more magic in the world than I had once believed.