home from the storm

You know that feeling after a killer storm, where you find yourself standing in the middle of its wreckage, but you close your eyes and the world smells clean?

Yesterday was Love's birthday. We waited for him all day to arrive. The tension in my heart was building up like somebody was putting up poorly constructed block towers that would soon collapse. So many feelings clouding my skies like a gathering storm. What could have been happening? Where is he? Is he even coming? What would I say to his family when he fails to arrive?

Come hell or high waters, he said. I'll be there.

And when the doorbell rang, the block tower collapsed with a thud. Like the child in me suddenly realized that whatever happens to the block tower doesn't matter after all. The mess it made was left unnoticed, because somebody who has just arrived from a more difficult kind of war has just found his way home.

Tears flowed. Words, unspoken. Mother and son shared a long embrace. Brother and brother nodded their acknowledgments. And I felt, for the first time, that I might not have a place there. In a family so closely knit yet so irrevocably distant.

My place was outside. Away from that family reunion. To a corner where I suddenly noticed the fallen blocks and where suddenly they were important again and that my heart is shattered because they've collapsed to the floor.

I didn't see him follow me there. But when I turned, he was in front of me.

Our conversation was short and simple. A complete contrast to the events that have just taken place.

But what's done is done. What matters now is what's to be done.

"I have no place in your life right now." I told him.

And he held my hand and simply hugged me.

"Would I ask you to be here if that were true? Would I be here if you didn't have a place in my life?"

"I don't know."

I truly don't know. A forever storm that's still brewing. How much longer must we seek shelter? He laid me down the facts, but I still have so many questions. Questions he's not ready to answer. Questions that will have to wait. In time... In time...

But he's home.

Battered and bruised.

And it's my job to ease the pain.

He's home.

And so am I.

If this is not love, I don't know what is.

You know that feeling after a killer storm? You find yourself standing in the middle of it's wreckage, so you just close your eyes.

And the world smells clean...