Kaleidoscope

Six months -- six-and-a-half, more like. Half a year, a little more. (And things that seem impossible, improbable...well, what is reality, anyway, really?)

You are a kaleidoscope; we are bits of colored glass and intricacies and glinting mirrors. Things are real and not-real in the same place, same time. Same breath.

I spilled boiling water on my hand, making you coffee, and the pain was exquisite; it was a living thing, it was a door that opened up and sucked me in and shut hard behind me. For a week my hand was like some off-kilter prop, some unreal thing used to frighten children, but then, two weeks later (and I pick at it, even though I shouldn't, but it actually seemed to make things better, faster) it looks like a normal human hand once more. Pinker than it should be, slightly wrong, but something recognizable as part of me. There is a certain resilience, sometimes, in certain situations, places, moments, that surprises, even if it shouldn't.

There are things I have let go, and in doing so, they have let me go, too, and some small part of me wishes -- maybe (but it's hard to tell, sometimes, so maybe not) -- that I missed them, that I wanted...what? But the more solid reality (whatever that might be) is that I don't, I haven't, I don't think I will. And that, too, surprises, although I might not know why it should. (Like this place, which, when it was empty was some kind of halfway-refuge, maybe, and then it got so crowded that I found it hard to breathe at times, but now it is so much closer to empty than filled again, and there is something that tastes almost like relief at that, though it's tied up in all kinds of other things and not as simple as it might sometimes feel, or as it ought to be.)

Three weeks now, jobless, and the next year or more-than-a-year stretching out in front of me, without form or plan or schedule, and if I could never work again I wouldn't, because this might be the first time in years I have consistently felt rested on any given day, time moving at the pace it wants to, and nothing (or very nearly, anyway) being forced. Like this, on a random afternoon when I am coming back from doing some small errand, somewhere, I can walk twelve blocks and end up at your door, curl up against you on your bed in the middle of a noise-bright day, and fall into the feeling of your hands against my skin, and after, fall into that magic sort of mid-day sleep -- heavy-without-weight and mostly dreamless (until I am close to waking, and then the world seeps into my sleeping mind and steers my thoughts, and twists them into something not-real but rooted there, and I wake myself up laughing, and mumble explanations at you, half-awake, and I can feel the smiles in your fingertips before I see your face).

And this is warm and solid, and utterly intangible (open full hands; they are empty), and you are something, or nothing, or a third option without a name. This thing that has words attached but nothing to define it (and it is tiresome, it becomes so full of weary, to have things always defined and needing edges) -- it is here and it is not anywhere, or it is everywhere, or it doesn't matter at all but when I wake up, sometimes, it is from laughter.

You are a smile, hooked in my skin like something sharp, coloring each breath, the tint hiding beneath tears or dreams or who-knows-what-everything; you are the voice in my ear each night -- or very close to it -- before I sleep.

And nothing and no one is simple, and sometimes, it doesn't really matter (or if it does, it still doesn't, really).

And every glowing letter is a kiss, if you can just stop (and close your eyes) and really look.