Reflections...

Awakened to the clamoring of my heart, I slowly shake the silence from the corners of this solemn, darkened bedroom. Restlessness now equalized between both my soul and the surrounding stifling air, I feel compelled to seek out redemptive understanding...a way for my heart to breathe. As I depart on my lonely midnight walk into the streets of the humid Mississippi summer, the ever present winds and waves echo nearby as gentle but permanent reminders of the inherent volatility of even the most simplistic moments here in this place...

Something has changed. Her words no longer authored with the same depth, nor fervor. The last messages I received, merely shallow dialogue in what was the most compelling, heart wrenching and significant conversation I had ever experienced. If she was now content to let this go...to reconcile her current life, alter her intentions here while abdicating this love, surely she would grant me that privilege, that essential gift. Alas, my heart aches.

Saddened. For the first time in this, I feel utterly mortal. My cape now tattered, my bleeding heart readily exposed to the callous and ungrateful night lying here before me. I reflect on this conversation to determine the source of its unplanned demise. I can only deduce that perhaps my reflection was to blame...

Reflections are intriguingly insightful reminders of where you stand even when your conceptions of reality are both lofty and idealistic. Love makes you believe that emotions transcend reality, that its essential presence washes away all detractors, all imperfections with an uncommon ease. Perhaps, I am a little too unattractive now in my current state of physical maturation. Twenty years can do that to a previously strapping young athlete now nearly four decades in age. I can only surmise with obvious pain that was one of the recent pivot points which has carved out the path of dissolution here.

Ironically enough, my barren feet stand in rigid silence upon the beach that only seven years to the day, Hurricane Katrina battered with 30 foot waves. I feel marginalized and reminded that what is now remains at peace is only a brief respite from what ruins may become....the same water that nourishes us is the very same that destroys us. Love is my nourishment..... Perhaps it was my heart and not my heel that was left untempered and unprotected at the River Stix. For now, I stand vulnerable and alone, just as the homes did proudly during the intense storms, but without the warning allotted to their structures and certainly without the hopes for a promising return to glory after their subsidence.

As I gaze out upon the moonlit water, I feel comforted by an unnaturally warm embrace.
Perhaps this is not about me at all, but just the course of love itself. Perhaps I am just too hard on myself....perhaps in fact, the reflections are just nature carving out its own controlled burn upon my soul....to purify my life, to wash away the essence of my own foundation in order to rebuild and reclassify my petty existence. It would be cruel to believe that all of this conversation was simply a bold wakeup call, but I know better than to question fate and its intentions.....certainly not while standing literally on the shores of the Gulf Coast. The new epicenter of this storm is within my soul. How will I prepare for its arrival? What lessons remain to be taught here?

Who will believe in this long enough to remain standing after the wrath of its pruning has been completed? I turn to leave and notice the sand is blackened without the sun, everything is dark without reflections of light.....ergo, I need to find my own source of light......to ever have a chance of restoring my reflections.......restoring my life.