if all you want is to be valued, she said, then stop telling people they are lying when they say they value you.

i know you dont tell them with words, she said.  you tell them by being you.  you have to let people value you in their own way.

and she said, trust me, that is not as easy as it sounds, with you.

and what else she said, would make you happy?  what do you feel you have failed at, that would have made you happy?

family, i said.

then why dont you try that, she said.  and dont say you have.  you have never tried to make a family intentionally.  you have tried to cover up circumstances with a family.  you have never tried to make a family, and then done the other things.  you have done the other things, and then tried to make a family.  you tried to do that with me, she said, and failed.  you tried to do that with ______, and failed.

why, she said, dont you not worry about everything else, and simply work on that part.  you and someone.  you and someones.  make the family you want.  and once you figure that part out, maybe the rest of life wont seem so bad.

i know you are going to tell me im wrong, she said, but until you are able to forgive yourself for whatever horrible thing you think you did, you are going to miserable.  and even if you somehow dont end up alone, you will not be nearly as happy as you deserve to be.

everyone in your life has forgiven you.  there is nothing wrong with forgiving yourself.  i know you wont, she said,  but you should.

listen, she said.

it sounds like you know exactly what you want.  you know.

why dont you try, honestly try, not to fuck it up.

this collection of writing seems to be unnaturally centered on planes.  three weeks from right now, i will have walked to the office with my little roll along suitcase, pack slung over my shoulder, and will have them sitting across from me in a plain black chair, occupying the space that is normally reserved for spanish disgruntlement.  i will not be paying attention to anything, i will simply be ready to go to the airport, to go and see her again.

in case you havent noticed, the girl holds a special place to me.

this trip will be different, in some ways.  there will be many other people involved, for one.  it will be a tremendous amount of new information for her, a tremendous amount of new faces.  she will immediately become everyones favorite human, since these people have waited thirty one years to see my body relax.  they may not know what to do with that.  they may think i have cancer or took too many pills for the flight.  they may assume it is a hundred different things before they realise that that calmness comes from inside, from that bared honesty.  it will not be the thing they look for first.

but you cant blame them, that would be the same as saying that you look first at the possibility that you were struck by a tiny meteorite, to explain a mosquito bite.

it will be different as well, in that it will be an entire, and uninterrupted week together, away from everything.  that is something that we never had, not even when we were young and angelic.

and you may be asking, wait.  you never had an uninterrupted week together?  in ten years?  how is it possible that you, that either of you, would be able to find enough value in this to try again, to risk so much everyday comfort, if you never had an uninterrupted week together?

i know.  i know that is what you are thinking.  and i think that is fair.  not to say we didnt have time together, we did.  but it was not the type of time that we yearned for, even at that young age.  it was not the type of time that was conducive to the overwhelming presence, not just to us, but to anyone else in the room, that here were two people, that were not simply perfect for each other, they were actually created with the other person in mind.

it was sporadic, and intermittent, and rushed, and loud.  not all the time, but those are the adjectives that leap to mind.  she was the other side of a downtown street, and my mind was in the middle of the light.

i could not get to her, no matter how hard i tried.  and yet, i could not get enough of her.

i think that was one of the things that we tried the hardest to explain when we first began to explore each others lives a bit more intentionally, a while ago, namely how we could still have these thoughts and opinions, given the long periods of silence, given the fact that i hadnt seen the corners of her mouth in close to a decade.  and i think that we finally decided, after exhaustive prodding, circuitous trains of logic, legendary doubting and disbelief, that the reason that we could not explain it, was that it was its own explanation.

that it really didnt matter if we could not find the words for that sense of correctness, because the sense of correctness was there.  undeniably.

and over time, we have both moved mountains for the other.  we have both razed entire primitive civilizations and stood, quaking and sweating, holding our hands open to say, look at this!  do you see this!  i do not care if i am silent, look at what i did!

can you not see what i am showing you, you silly boy! she would say.

and i did.  and i do.  and that is one of the reasons that we will be in a car, after that plane.   one of the reasons why she will sleep so silently even though she is not driving.  one of the reasons that she will slip her fingers through mine, without thinking about who is around to see.

…

every day you know, it becomes a little easier to know how we will end up, and a little harder to settle for two dimensional spectres until that time arrives.

i am not a religious man, but i am wrong a lot.  and assuming the chance that i am, i do not see how god could be so cruel, to keep her away from me, and vice versa.

and i will drop the pretense that i am speaking to an audience, instead of directly to her, directly to the only person who has ever been worthy of my tongue.

i love you, little girl.

i thank you for many things, but especially for understanding, and being willing to cross your arms and defiantly state, that we are not what the world is.  that we will figure out the details, when we have breaths to share.  that we will live in comfort, or poverty, or anxiously cold climes, and regardless, we will live honestly.

we were embarrassed of this for a third of our lives.  embarrassed that we could let something that thick, slip through our fingers.  embarrassed that if people understood that loss that we locked away, that they wouldnt understand, or that if they did, they would look at us in a way we could not stand.

or that they would turn and look at our daughter, and ask questions we could not answer, without letting all of that out again.

if we have learned nothing else in our time apart, we learned that there is nothing quite like us out there to be found.

i am up here, on this stage, in front of all of these people, unembarrassed, and proud.

now come up here.

yes.

right there.

i am back from that trip, back and all the more confident.

i have no idea where i will end up, ultimately, but i know with whom i will. and this is reassuring.

i am so used to having to live life on tiptoes. to living as if a single mistake will cause everything to fall apart. and this happened, generally, because those things were built on tiny houses of mirrors, and the slightest breeze would send it tumbling.

it is nice to live as i am, flaws and all, and be loved for that. to know that small mistakes are small mistakes, and are not the beginning of disaster.

to know that her small mistakes are small mistakes, and to lend a hand in helping to mend them, so we can step past them and keep heading forward.

that is good.

who cares where a bed is, with all of that? so long as it is one in which she wakes.

and two weeks from this slow second, i will be on final descent, in an equally cramped plane, watching the serpentine waterways of albany move beneath me, and hoping that the pilot doesnt mistake them for runways.

and the same woman will be there, in a different airport, in different clothing and nervousness, will be there in the same car with the same eyes.  she will approach me this time, helping me close the distance, and will come into my arms with the same unembarrassed ease with which she did the last time.

she will show me a new city, another new city, and demonstrate all of the things she has come to love, both through discreet pointing and words, and through the simple angling of her body while moving.  she will demonstrate these things with an almost completely concealed trepidation, trying to judge my reactions to these things, these places and people.  i believe that the time for worrying about my reaction to her will have passed by then, will have passed the moment she turned to look at me fully in that other city, that other time.  this will be a look of worry that, would i love this place as she does, would i love this place, with the same unquestioning nakedness with which i love her.  she will watch for flashes in my eyes that say i am uncomfortable, for small downturns at my mouth that indicate swallowed questions.  she will watch the motion of my feet among the trunks of trees on our way to dinner, and try to determine if i would come here again someday, if i would be comfortable placing my feet in all of this grass, among all of this rain, if i would consider a life with her, within the place where her life lay.

she will show me what she is offering me, what she has kept for me over the years, and will accept my gifts with the gentle knowledge that this is how i offer myself.

she will close her eyes when i speak, when we attempt to occupy the exact same space in the moments before sleep, and will let the words pour down her like a pleasantly scalding shower, trying to find the truth i give, in a manner that makes sense to her.

she will ask me if i love her, if i have loved her, in all of those hollow days in between.  she will not ask me why i never told her, nor why i was so afraid back then.  she will find the answers to the unspoken questions, in the small drop of regret that will always hide within my eyes, and the answer to the spoken ones, in the way that i hold her to me, in the way that i place my head underneath her hair, our faces against each other in such a way as to be undeniable.

we will promise so many things, without ever using the word.  we will correct the trials of the universe, with simple breakfasts and tea.

we will become what we were always designed to be, whole and complete, through no other method than simply admitting, that this is so much more than we were ever capable of, despite our best efforts, apart.

at the starbucks:

me: venti americano please.

her: would you like that hot?

me: *sigh*

her: would you like that hot?

me: it is five oclock in the morning.

her: *silence*

her: please pull forward.

i am thankful for the ability to smile, for the distant and soft insistence that this is ok.  i am thankful for the ability to be honest, not just with the world, but with my own chest.

i am thankful for the concept that a life can be truly shared, the highs and lows, perfectly.

i am thankful for the chance to do anything.

i am thankful for 3 beautiful daughters, and for the quiet girl who loves them all.

and in my head, i would say, why do you care anyway?  why is that an important thing to know?  i would say, here is one more thing that you can hate. here is one more thing that you can look at me and not understand.   i would say, here is one more thing that can get me off of this earth a little quicker.  good.

i would like to stop smoking now.  sixteen or seventeen years in.  or, in rough math, approximately 186000 cigarettes in.  not that i still dont enjoy it.  i do.  i can think of fewer things that i have enjoyed more over the years than the first cigarette of the morning, taken with a chipped and cracked cup full of black coffee, staring off a porch or a stoop at the morning still waiting to be born.  there is something nice in that.  there is something serene, in killing yourself slowly amidst so much beauty.

im just here, the comfortable weight of the pack in my pocket, the randomly colored lighter somewhere on my person, swiped from among the pennies on the countertop in the dark, and realising that there are things that are worth more than that.

for all of the reasons i smoked, the number one was that i wanted it to hurt when i died.  i wanted it to hurt physically.  i wanted it to hurt mentally, just knowing that i would not see tomorrow because of a choice, because of those beautiful mornings in the nude, conquering the sunrise like a mad roman emperor.  just knowing that all of those people, with their clucking had been right, not that they would know it, and that i would rest secure in the knowledge that i had made a bad choice.  yet again.

and now.

now i do not want that.  perhaps it is too late.  perhaps when i go in for my next chest xray it wont matter if i smoke or not.  perhaps i will already have something metastasizing all over the place.  perhaps that will be the ultimate irony.  who knows.

…i have lost ten years of a life.  i have lost ten years of a possibility of a life.  i never thought i would be able to put a number on that.  i never thought the loss would stop, would possibly stop.  i always assumed it would be phrased more like ‘i lost a life on such and such a date’ as opposed to ‘i lost a life from such and such to such and such’.  i never though i would use the word such so much in a sentence.

i can not have those years back.  i am learning this.  i can not relive them.  i can only experience them in pieces.  and this is ok.  this is beyond ok.

but i have the opportunity to make up for those years, by adding on to the end.

perhaps an additional decade, of a found life,

will help to even out a subtracted decade, of a lost life.

i had a discussion yesterday.  about midway through, i realised i was sounding irritated.  probably bordering on angry.  i told myself, well part of it is that you are driving in the dregs of a pickup with no window in it, and are simply talking loudly to combat the wind.  and thats true.  but.  to be fair.  i was probably a little irritated too.  not at the conversation, mind you.  i was irritated with myself.

there was a time, when i would have dug my teeth into the topic and started shaking my head, when i would have scattered fluff and down all over the place.  when i would have absolutely manipulated and mutilated the english language because it was so vitally important that the other person understand exactly what was in my head.

this was before i realised that what was in my head didnt always make sense.  before i realised that the things in my head might just be little firecrackers off of bent or cracked neuron stems.   before i realised that, under the right circumstances, my view of logical could be so far from what other people thought, that trying to explain it was an exercise in futility.  before i realised that, if i just sat for a little while, the gentle rocking of the earth would move those stems back around to where they should be for a while.

and yesterday, i did not do that, did not bite and chew.  i realised that i sounded irritated.  i realised that i had no actual idea of what i wanted to say and was relying instead on the mad extemporaneousness that had served me so well when i was younger.  and most importantly, i realised that the person to whom i was speaking, was getting upset.

the important part, that.

so we stopped.  we stopped, and sat, and spoke of new jobs and locations.  we spoke of dinner plans and bedtimes.  we unmasked and told each other of our love.  we sat for a while, speaking quietly.

so what is it in which i have grown?  the ability to understand time.

today can be wonderful.  today often is.  and i lived for god knows how long, for that.  not so much a life as a collection of days.

but.  as we sat yesterday, as we whispered, i realised what i had been trying to say in words, what i had been getting frustrated about, when the stems began to storm.

that as much as i will love, and protect, and serve, and honor today, that it is important to remember that, no matter what, i will do all of those things tomorrow as well.

not tomorrow as in a second today.

tomorrow as what it is, the continuation of a strong and unbroken walk together.

it will be well, things generally are.  between the world and its inexorable rotation, and my own abilities to do the same, things generally come out ok.

but it is a rough day, nonetheless.

a day probably much better filled with listened to minutiae, than with mumbled nonsensicals.

among my molecules, what it

is that is responsible for your cohesion.

i do not have to know, i know.  i do not have to

understand the exact physical structure of your eye to

appreciate that it works as intended, or

the complex chemical formulas behind your pores, to

know that they make me

work as such.

but a part of me, would like to find that

answer, that descriptor of your

immovability, if only

to have a much thicker word, to be able to

adequately explain mine.