Ours is a tango A back and forth frisson Of two magnetic energies Who yearn for connection But haven’t yet learned How to meet
Solitary creatures of habit Tentatively touching antennae We send out tendrils of exploration Like snail stalks curiously brimming Tasting the change in our atmospheres
We move in orbital paths Circling slow, instinctively Testing for friend or foe A dance of stops and starts I move closer … You pull away You come near … This time I retreat The pattern of our feet Beating the manifesto rhythm Of our scarred hearts
We keep the faith But can we Keep it together Or would that rock our courses From their place Among the stars?
You shine… I am a mere reflection But a moment in your grace Can light the dark inside of me For this space Of borrowed time, This pause In my Nocturnal Arc.
A chance meeting A peripheral vision becomes Connection Souls’ windows open Allowing both of us a glimpse inside Vulnerable you see me I feel your spirit as well Like recognising like As two cosmic beings dwelling In earthly shells We breathe the same air I breathe you in Notice the texture and the markings On your skin A testament Of places and people you’ve been I entrust my essence to your Capable craftsman’s hands We give Our tokens to each other A mix of art and magick and grace Your face revealed I love your smile The easy way you draw me near And the way our friendship grows Like tangled roses on a vine Wildly free Journeying together.
There’s always a last time for everything we do. The last time you ate at that restaurant, the last time you took part in a hobby, the last time you spoke to so-and-so.
Sometimes we know our “lasts”. Our last day at work. The last day of a holiday. The last time we will see a dying relative this side of the veil.
But often it’s only much later when you’re reflecting that you realize you never did go back to that Greek restaurant before it closed, or see that friend before they moved away. You stopped going to a particular club because you wanted a change of scene, then the scene changed while you weren’t looking and you got lost along the way.
Of course we can’t live our moments as if they are our last. We can’t force ourselves to live at a manic FOMO pace. But sometimes I argue with someone special and I think, “What if those are my last words to them?” Or I share an intimate night with someone and wonder if that will be the last time we would be so close.
Some regrets are for the things we do. Others are for the things we didn’t. Nothing seems to sting more than the regret of a squandered opportunity. There’s no ‘undo’ button for life. There’s no way to save and re-load an earlier checkpoint.
Trying to recreate a past happiness never works, even if you come close, it will still be its own thing. So the only solution is to come to terms with loss and learn to deal with endings that don’t come with closure.
There is a way to move forward though. Learn to live in the moment, be mindful and appreciative of what you have. Live with gratitude as a constant companion. Take nothing for granted. And say ‘I love you’ as often as you can.
One day when I was 10 years old, I walked over to a new girl I had just met, offered her a jelly bean, and asked if she wanted to be friends. She took the jelly bean on offer and said yes. It turned out she lived on the same street as me and for three years we were inseparable best friends. Now that I’m on the other side of 30, I’m left pondering the question – when did making friends with other people get so hard to do?
It’s easy to make friends and stay close to people when you see them every day and share bonding adolescent experiences with them. (Having not gone to public school, I can only conjur up images of cliched coming-of-age movies, but I assume those have some basis in truth.) If you’re lucky, you’ll carry your schoolmates into your 20’s – and if you’re really lucky, you’ll take them with you even further.
But once you leave school/uni and get out into the real world, you find it a different game altogether; and if you don’t keep your old connections, you’re socially screwed. Start a new job, take up a new hobby, have a sea change or move to a new town and you’ll find an established social circle which may or may not have room for you. They don’t particularly mind you joining them, but it’s quite clear that you’re the “new guy”, the outsider, at best that kinda cool person they haven’t quite yet made their minds up about.
And for some reason society puts a taboo on loneliness and turns it into something to be ashamed of, to be scared of, to be hidden under the carpet. People associate loneliness with desperation and deeply distrust both. So in order to make new friends, you have to play it cool, you have to act like you don’t need new friends. Because “Hey, I think you’re cool and I’d really like it if we could be friends,” just doesn’t exist in the adult vocabulary. The catch is that if you’re too good at playing it cool, you only end up convincing people you don’t need their friendship. And that gets you nowhere.
So you try to find the balance, but you try way too hard. You wrangle invites to things, you stand on edges of conversations pretending you’re included, itching for a chance to jump in with something relevant and contribute. You do the washing up at every damn party, you volunteer for the jobs nobody else wants and somehow it’s always your shout for coffees or beers. You go out of your way to be nice, to seek out an unfilled niche in the group, settle into it and make yourself indispensable.
And if you manage to find someone who might actually be a potential BFF, you get excited. You bombard a them with emails, texts, invitations and Facebook friendship requests. Congratulations, now you’re known as “intense” at best, “desperate” at worst (and the word “stalker-ish” also springs to mind. They now think you’re weird and will slowly back away while you’re talking to them,
Maybe this is just how it is for me. Maybe all the home-schooling fried all my social circuits into oblivion, and I’m doomed to be hot mess of awkward behavior. But I know one thing for sure: I would give anything for the days when you could just walk up to someone, offer them a jelly bean, and ask them to be your friend. Failing that, can someone please produce a line of “let’s be friends!” greeting cards (perhaps with an awkward turtle motif)?
Cadence Poetica 