Written with the prompts: mission statement, this is the voice of my body, but then I might not, worth the wait, you’ll thank me later, was I wrong, tap tap tap, urgent, symbol of your independence, live with the itch, a crooked umbrella, the darkness shattered, he was weird
We gather because it’s been fifty years, fifty years since we’ve been in school together. We drink, we laugh, we don’t mention turkey wattles and crows’ feet, expanding waistbands and lower back aches. Instead I listen as they speak of families and careers. Someone mentions corporate mission statements and my mind conjures up the California missions we made from corrugated cardboard and tissue paper in fourth grade. The boy everyone pegged as a weird geek has grown into a financial savant. He’s rambling on about municipal bonds and interest rates. “You’ll thank me later,” I hear him say, but I’m staring into my vodka martini. “Then again,” I mumble, “we might not.”
Was I wrong to come tonight? Was it worth the wait? The voice of my body is tensed in my muscles, my calves and biceps. My itchy eyelids are fogging my vision. I live with this itch, these repressed desires. But I’m used to it now; it seldom rises to the surface anymore.
I hear an urgent tapping, tapping somewhere. I imagine Poe’s Raven summoning lost classmates, but no one else hears it.
There is a crooked umbrella floating in my dreams, tilting this way and that, as if guided by an unseen hand. No matter which way I wandered back then, it seemed to shelter me, and I wonder at that. What did it protect me from? What did I miss?
Will the darkness finally shatter now like a mirror reflecting black water? I rise and pull on my hiking boots, strap on my head lamp and water bottle, symbols of my prized independence. I arrive at the pond at midnight. It’s warm, and crickets are harmonizing. I shine my light and catch a glimpse of tadpoles below, bat wings above. I am floating in the humid air.
I have come to trust the flow of life. I allow it to carry me.
Photo by Hans Isaacson on Unsplash
