i was born on a boisterous ~red-white-and blue~ summer day with many soulmates to one day meet.
a plethora of potentials.
i’ve found a lot of them.
my friends whose arms are my life rafts. my mother. the women who have buoyed me. the babies i have mothered. our cats. japanese katsu curry on a cold night.
you.
when we found each other ~ kids suspended on land in the middle of the sea ~ i’m not sure we were soulmates, just yet.
my soul barely developed. a whole life not yet lived.
albeit fragmented, the deepest parts of my inner knowing ~ was sure you wore the eyes
of my one-day-daughters.
because of the desolation within myself, loving you felt emergent.
as i’ve aged and chipped away at my own spirit ~ the more love i have unearthed for you.
i have discovered the work of creating a soulmate is stars aligned AND persistent choice.
written in galaxies AND willed into existence.
growing up made it so. parenting our children made it so. crumbling and rebuilding when it felt like the ashes of us were slipping through our god damn fingers made it so.
—
our therapist told us to begin having conversations with the teenagers we once were. she says we were so young; the pinky promises made, so massive
consequently, there were areas that we skipped over. there were places we missed. there are parts of us that were stopped in time,
stunted/stagnant,
intimacy rushed through.
so together, we bring our inner kids to the table each morning for breakfast. we lay out all the pieces before them and ask what we’ve forgotten,
we ask where it hurts.
together, we resurrect our wonder and whimsy. we tell them of sorrow accumulated & our strength & courage to deconstruct.
they’re devastated by the little deaths of themselves they see in us now.
we tell them they are not graves, but alters that we worship.
we bear them our testimony of self compassion.
i remind her that she can set down the embarrassment she carries for having a cautious timeline, i forgive her for being scared to live
you’ll tell him he will save his own life when he takes medicine for his ancient, foreboding pain
(you win exactly 2 cool points with your sick tats and lego collection)
we lose a few points when we tell them to find God in all the places the church tells them not to look
we promise to service the grief they can’t even bear to notice right now
we lick their wounds
and now hand in hand with the children inside of us — we teach them how to dismantle and they teach us how to sculpt.
we build bridges over the gaps while we kiss each others foreheads again.
we lace our fingers and look into each others eyes and live without the urgency we inherited as kids.
in our stillness, in our silence,
in our giggly sleepovers and our ~ somehow both stupid and insightful~ kaleidoscope conversation — forging new paths.
being known.
tenderly weeding the Garden of Us.
beginning again.
when the sun warms us in the morning, i vow to find new ways to love you
to hear you,
to see you,
unburied, unhurried
without altering, without expectation.
slowly, i will discover you.
i will savor you.
i will take my time.
i will not demand harvest before I sow. i will keep my eyes upright in gratitude while i gather.
i will witness you, reverently.
i will be unafraid to hold the holy pieces of both of us that we swore we would never be.
i will cherish the way your smile meets your sparkling sea glass eyes as they still find their way
to me
across a room.
i will kneel at the alter
of all of the people we were that carried us here.
our sacred journey.
the years it took, crawling on our knees to finally find the soulmate inside of ourselves
(thank God for our scarred skin)
so we could knit a soulmate in one another
my darling. my love. my eternal summer.
my patient home.
i will sink my teeth into our life together.
i will not hurry through the miracle that is
you and me
being here,
eating breakfast,
sharing a lifetime.
