Druids of Relativity

It seems unfair that your soul mate could live an ocean away
Or in a different time
Or on another planet
And yet we make do
We outstretch our fingers and reach as far as we can
And sometimes, we manage to bridge the gap
Even if only with our shadows

Malaria

There's a certain kind of sick I get sometimes. Where I get so dizzy and delirious that it's hard to concentrate during the day. My mind will just cloud over with the inability to focus on any one thing. Thoughts will touch through the fog, and just as quickly slip away again. But the worst is at night. That same cloud that was formless and thoughtless turns colourful at night, firing random synapses and unlocking memories in new and horrifying ways, chaining together people and things and places in an acid wash of connections. Nights like this I am never sure when I am asleep or awake, whether I am dreaming or actually seeing and hearing the things around me. This one night I was attempting to sleep when I had a dream, or maybe it was a hallucination, of my best friends fighting each other over a ring. They fought viciously, with nails and teeth, trying desperately to draw blood. And they howled and snarled at each other like beasts. Until I realized the sounds were much to real. Too feral. I woke up to hear that the noises were coming from outside my window. Two dogs were fighting and making a huge racket outside. I listened until one dog finally squealed and the fight sounded as if it had stopped. My sick and delirious brain immediately took hold and I slipped back into my vivid dreams. The next morning when I went outside, I found a dog, dead, a few hundred yards from my window. Blood trailed from further along away as if it had been dragged a bit, and clutched in its jaw was a small stuffed bear, with one eye hanging by a thread.

Singles Bar

I can feel you approaching
Through the smoke and lights
There are moments of clarity where I know you are there, just waiting for me to make the first move
But I feel lost, that I don't know what direction you are in
That if I take a step, it would be a step away from you
And it paralyses me to the spot
Stops me from ever finding you

Venice

She sits in the back of the gondola.
A large hat blocks out what little sun there is, and dark glasses block out her bloodshot eyes.
She shivers, frail in her old age, a shawl drawn up around her shoulders to block the morning chill that permeates the fog floating above the water.
The gondolier draws the boat along slowly, but with purpose; skin wrinkles across bones, a deep brown made leathery by years of sun and salt water.
To the left and right, the lights shining behind people's windows beams out at them, seemingly floating in the air just behind the fog.
She imagines what she must look like right now. A boat gently rocking along inside of a snow globe.
She looks at her right hand. Tattooed there, on the webbing between her thumb and fore finger, is a half heart. Drawn in such a way that it was completed when her hand was wrapped around his chest, resting naturally over the other half heart tattooed over his own heart. A heart made complete every night when he fell asleep in her arms.
Clutched in her trembling hands, a small ceramic vase. Intricately detailed on it the picture of lilies floating in water, etched in red ink on flawless white.
Her promise to him, although too late, had been kept.
She shivers again, now at the prospect of falling asleep in a strange bed in a strange country. With only half a heart.

Take a look at yourself and make a change

The pursuit of happiness in my own life has been a treacherous journey.
One filled with much doubt and anxiety.
There have been good days, and terrible days.
But always, always, I looked for happiness in the wrong places.
I looked for it in the things I did. In the people around me.
I treated happiness like it was something external to me, that had to be acquired, like food or money.

It wasn't until I found it, deep within myself. Shackled to my neuroses and self doubt, all weighing it down. It wasn't until I learned to unchain my happiness from my darkness, to paint the world with all the shades of happiness that my heart could spare, that I truly learned that happiness comes from within.

Caged

It took me many years to realize that the cage I lived in had no doors.
It simply hung over me, keeping me from floating away.
That I could get out whenever I wanted.

It took me many more years to actually walk out.

Fear of Abandonment

There's something I really want to tell you.
I want to tell you that those times I hurt your feelings, I hurt them because I didn't know how else to show I cared.
Those times I laughed at you, insulted you, I regret a lot of those times.
I wish it didn't have to be so hard with you.
I want to call you up and see you.
I want to hold you so tight, to make you understand what it is that I feel for you.
I want you to know that we never talk because there are no words for the things I want to talk to you about.

But I don't think I will.
I don't know if you'll ever really know.
And one day what we have will dry up and float away.
And you'll just become another fond and sad memory.

Soft

There is a softness to you.
A softness I don't understand, I cannot quantify.
It comes through on rainy days, wrapped in freshly laundered blankets and sipping on warm milk tea loaded with sugar.
It comes through on long drives home on back country roads covered in fresh white snow, wearing t-shirts in a car with the heater set just right as it fends off the fingers of cold scratching at the window.
A softness that I see in your smile, eyes half lidded, as if you are just falling to sleep into the middle of a dream of napping in a litter of kittens.
A softness that I am amazed lives on in the world we live in today.
A softness that seems to endure inside of you, even as you hide it away from the world more each day.

Indestructible

As I grow older, a lot less scares me.
A lot less worries me.
Things that used to get me all worked up now don't seem so bad; silly even.
A lifetime of realizations has brought me to this place: that no matter how much I worry, I will always make it to the next day, or I won't.
Life is not about the amount of days lived, its about the amount of life lived each day.
Its about taking each day, about being hopeful for the day to come, and proud of the day past.
Its about leaving the world a little better than you found it.
Whether you make it to tomorrow, or another hundred years from now.
Life is always exactly long enough.
That thought alone makes me indestructible.

I miss you Jim Henson

Sometimes I feel like a marionette.
The only thing that holds me up, that keeps me moving, is love.
Your love for me, that keeps my head up, and my legs moving.
That keeps me moving forward.
And my love for you, that makes me want to break free.
To overpower your love so that I may embrace you, and make you feel the joy that leaps in my heart whenever I see you.
Or at least that you might feel in your throat the same lump I feel in mine, when all that seems bright in a bleak world is that you are loved at all, even by someone far away.