speaking words

i'm not bold the way so many are. with the nose ring that i'd love to pull off and the hair cut that the girls envy and boys just shrug at. i'm not that creative or thoughtful or great with remembering.

but.

i am learning how to give away my time. and i love coffee dates and tea dates and Paul's dates and sitting around my table with the green tablecloth below the heavy breathing air conditioner. i love to listen and i know how to let you talk. just you and me and i promise i'll try to focus on you, just you, till we are done with our conversation.

this is one of the greatest things i have ever known on this earth- total connection with a human being and i am yes, truly understanding your heart and you just asked me to share mine and that's exactly what i am going to do. let us bare and take it all off with our words: take off our fancy clothes that itch and step out from behind these masks and cut down the curtains and walls and throw bricks aside. can we love each other more, not less, because we see true life inside each other's eyes?

can we say what hurts to say and can we put the words out there that float quietly from our lips and stay suspended until the other grasps them and accepts them and makes us feel the more understand because of the risk we just took? can we see what is dirty and filthy--the worst--in each other and can that make us fall even more in love? can the broken pieces in you that you let me in on, can those be used to encourage my soul, somehow? can we find life in the chaos of real life, the wrestle and it-hurts-right-now? can we find the truest of beauty in that?

i believe so.

your hair was such a mess and your face glistened-rain or sweat, not sure-but you had never appeared so beautiful to me as then. what was it you were saying? something stunning real and honest and you were letting me in and that's what really matters.

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i'm considering the future these days, being a senior and all, and one thing i'm sure of is loving others with my heart and words in a personal relationship makes me come alive. growth and life happens over small coffee-shop tables and steaming mugs and on park benches and dull orange floor rugs. in relationship. in conversation. in sharing. in God's words. in that presence. (you can't get away)

that's pretty special.