“Forget The World To Find Us”

Growing pines

Let your hand find mine warm

Say goodbye

To the life that we scorned

Find every blade of grass a different shade of green

Or thorn

A healing friend

Maples Sigh

From the ever-changing winds

Birds will fly

To find home for their kin

The colors of the sunset will paint the story

that Our skin

Has yet to tell

Will you go?

Reap our sow?

And we’ll

Grow our garden’s flowers

Will you go?

Even though

We will

Lose our counted hours

Leave our broken palace

Forget the world

To find us

I got my first tattoo on Wednesday. It’s one of those things I had always thought I’d get but never felt there was a good enough reason, like buying that fancy dress, booking that trip to Cali, starting that blog. And then came a reason I didn’t like at all. I wanted to return it immediately. “Never mind, I don’t need it; I’m good. I can do without the clothes, the trips, the ink. I’ll give you the dreams, God; you take the cancer, okay? Thanks, but no thanks.”

But no matter how deep I dug my feet, no matter how low I sank my soles, they still lugged me to that first chemo appointment. I still watched them poke him red and take his taste away. I still stayed secretly praying that it would suddenly end. But it didn’t, and we waded through, week by week, hour by hour.

So we made our plans to dream in our nightmare, to borrow strength from our future memories. We made our trip to Cali, building our travel bus, and we bought those fancy clothes, wrapped in a love we hadn’t previously known. He leaned over, in a room void of color, to say, “you should start that blog and finish your book,”

And I got my first tattoo on Wednesday— a depiction of his port with his hand-drawn hearts as the access points.

ink by @awall_art_