my scattered little love

Sometimes I like writing more than talking.

It's a more certain way to be heard. 

The person reading isn't waiting their turn to talk

Or tuning out to something you just said.

The way we are all wont to do. 

In our quiet desperation to be heard.

Instead readers are silent.

They're simply processing.

And whatever it is you need to say is absorbed in their time

At their pace.

Sometimes I really need to be heard.

In person I'm sometimes too loud.

I laugh too loudly at my own jokes and I look away. 

I have a hard time looking people in the eye.

It's rather unnerving, to be sitting so vulnerably in someone's gaze. 

So my eyes dance around the room.

And I pretend it's not a big deal when connecting to someone with my eyes and my words is one of the most intense experiences in the world for me.

When it's only my words they stare you in your face.

They have nothing to hide 

To fear 

To doubt.

They just speak.

And the reader listens.

With writing you don't always need a response because what you needed to say was shared.

All you really need is to know it was seen.

That your thoughts were heard. 

That for that moment, that person knew your truth.

How they responded to it isn't the point.

That has nothing to do with you.

I've learned the cruelest thing we can do to one another is ignore.

Ignore each other's words, our pain, our existence.

We strip away the relationship we once shared, the closeness, the intimacy, the laughter, the tired tears, the hope and the trust, until all that's left is silence. 

The way it was between us before a sentence had ever been spoken.

And it's the greatest tragedy of all, the refusal to grow and accept each other's limitations, to wave to each other from either side of the sea.

But silence allows a loss to be permanent, to change the way we see the world, to kill the hope we'd desperately clung to.

And we mourn our loss and our misjudgement and wonder if everyone is so heartless and careless.

And eventually we find ourselves laughing with a stranger, and hugging them with the intensity we thought was reserved for someone else, and we let go.

Of what we once believed was. 

And what we doubt might be again.

And we lose ourselves with this person, this friend or this lover, or this soul sister, and their love brightens the tiny dark corner in our hearts.

And we believe again.

And we trust.

And we forget to think of those anymore, to be mad, to miss them, to see them in the stars. 

And we wonder how after every new bond, and every separation, we still doubt the power of it all,

The timing.

Its sheer perfection. 

And our buried hope 

Finally breathes again. 

For the sisters 

And the brothers

And the lovers

And kindreds

Who've been wary on their own long journeys

Desperately 

Achingly

Longing to fall into our arms

The one who will understand them 

Who will uplift and inspire them

The one who had to be filled with cracks to manage to stumble onto their path.

Just so.

My dear ones. 

My tribe.