Where Love Waits

There is a language

the air speaks

before it makes a sound

A tremble in the heart

The soul of the world,

clearing it's throat.

When truth hovers just beyond,

close enough to feel

impossible to touch.

I think we are born wanting to overflow.

To laugh too loudly,

to stumble and cry,

to sing in our cars,

windows down,

and make eye contact and smile with someone at the red light next to us.

To dance before the music gives us permission.

To tell a stranger that their smile reminds you of someone you miss,

that you hope their day is gentle, to soften and remember, we are only here.

As children,

we reach for every hand.

We explore and question and wonder and wander,

without caging, or shaming, or turning the lock.

And somewhere, without anyone saying it aloud,

we learn

to turn the volume down.

not too loud

not too honest

not too much

but we carry it

the almost's

the compliments that stay behind our teeth,

the hand squeezes we almost reached for,

the bodies that went rigid instead of danced,

Sometimes I imagine

every missed connection

still existing somewhere,

in between

buzzing softly

between hearts

between stars,

between versions of my life that spoke,

and the one that stayed quiet.

Perhaps, this language,

is what hope sounds like

when certainty has gone to sleep.

Not silence.

But, the stubborn insistence that somewhere,

beneath the noise,

isn't silence..

but everything,

the heart transmits,

that never quite reaches another heart.

And I wonder,

if loneliness is not absence of love,

but the accumulation of every affection and every spark of the soul,

that found no place to land.

And if this deafening silence,

is just the hum of human hearts,

And perhaps static,

is what love becomes

when it is carried,

but never

released.