Another two years have passed in a blur since I have blogged here. A blur that consists of my job, my growing daughter.... house chores and family drama. I haven't actually jotted anything down in my pen and paper journal in probably even longer. I have written another novel though.... That should count for something, no? A tale, all woven into 121,364 words of my imagination. High, like the thread count of my good sheets.
Thoughts of my old life come in sometimes to haunt me. To pull at my tender soul like it's calling to me again..... Only sometimes though. Only when it is quiet enough to remember things.
Some nights, when the house is quiet and Maddy is asleep, I close my eyes, and the memories come back like smoke that is sweet, heavy, and impossible to hold.
I can see myself younger, wilder. Just sunburnt and silhouetted against a foreign skyline. Wind in my hair, wine on my lips, and laughter spilling from my chest like a spell. I remember the trips across the country the most.... Riding for days to Texas... the journey to Alabama that was filled with heavy metal music and laughter with 3 of my friends.... the trip to Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, the Carolinas, Florida.....
And the men..... Sweet Goddess.... the beautiful men. Beautiful eyed strangers with rough hands and gentle mouths. Poets, artists, and liars. They were never mine to keep, only to taste for a moment, like a mystery dessert that I would taste at all the restaurants I learned to cook at and harness my craft that I molded into a career. I never asked them to stay though, and they never dared to ask me to stop moving. Just a single moment of tangled linen sheets and with desires we both wanted to fill in the moment.
Now my feet are still and planted in routine. There’s a mortgage. A husband that caresses me gently and deliberately. A calendar full of school things, girl scout events, and appointments. And yet, my gypsy heart still howls inside my ribs, whispering of train stations, flights, and one-way tickets. Howling for midnight kisses and sunrises in cities with names that don’t sit easy on my tongue.
Sometimes, I catch myself staring out the back door's window, my fingers trembling on a coffee cup, as if I could touch another life through the glass. One I lived, fiercely. One I don't try to chase anymore.
But no matter how carefully I have folded those years into the past, my soul remembers. My soul wants.
I could never go back to that life, you know? I feel like I was young enough to live dangerously then. I am happy and whole where I am now at this point and time. But sometimes... Just sometimes... If I stand on the back deck in the dark, listening to the passing night, I can hear my younger self giggle on the breeze, and something stirs in my chest.
I will try to not stay away again for too long. My words heal parts of me that I have buried deep, and I miss it. Maybe finishing up the novel I spent a year weaving has opened a flood gate in my fingertips again. Maybe.
Always spilling myself for you,
-J.C.
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