crowded

At sunrise there appeared deep pink painted clouds, brushes of violet beneath. I drew forth my small, lensed instrument, the one allowing me a momentary exhale. I carried the camera to the front porch, and it captured pleasing eastward images.

The door locked behind me. In bathrobe I knocked, and he opened to my chilly fingers, my dubious response to his assumption that I lingered in my office. We chanted the tone of martyric mornings, our song, our glances and rolled eyes, even, the elements of a caress. We readied for today’s deployment.

There’s no reasoning it out; life is crowded. Not in our rooms. Mostly, no. How I wish I could linger there, but to be needed, by parents and friends facing hardships, is good. For months I’ve envied others’ isolation, their expanses of stillness, loneliness a price I’d be willing to pay. You may as well know I’ve been this way long before we faced COVID seasons. Only now more critical doings require my time. They line my soul’s hallway, stacked, jutting enough so I trip in the darkness, wandering and anticipating any pale hint of dawn.

I took time after breakfast to survey my camera’s images. Dark limbs stretched across the morning cloudscape, above the neighbors’ rooftop. Trunks raised their branches hymning nature, praising beauties of pink tones and indrawn, exhaled breath. Enjoying interaction sure to carry them over the long haul of gray slab backdrops and frost, maybe an ice encasement or two.

When I think it through, I regret my many plunges into dissatisfaction. I confess: these inner workings have arisen on my singular terms, from a flat perspective that succumbs to the second law of thermodynamics.

I long for something deeper and fuller than my whirling thoughts reveal. Something lasting. If I could imitate this dawn of bare limbs lifted, might I exhale wonder at the gift before me? Treasure chilled fingers and shaded hues? For me to do so would be as if a strong human being could be allowed inside the hallway of soul I now pace, and dexterously the one entering could sort, lift, and carry away each off-kilter pile, leaving behind fresh breaths of order, of hymnody and gratitude.