Wanderess,

With your worn through soles and curious grin, trust me when I say you are not alone. The journey rests upon your skin in scars and in love. And the tightropes reaching from cheeks to eyes, though small, have deepened with sun and smile. Nights spent on airport floors, the woman on the bus and lines on a page, all of it makes it way into your blood. Though we were never meant for magazine covers and white picket fences our curiosity has strength. We are open highway and fragile hearts. Daydreams of missed exits and one-way plane tickets are not throwaway ideas but active frameworks for the next escape. There are lessons we have learned the hard way and when you run, it has not always been beautiful. The people you leave behind learn to fill the gap. Sometimes keeping yourself amid the whirlwind of away can be a perilous task and not all of us make it through the danger. No one ever taught us what to do when the only constant in our lives is the lack of a constant. On certain evenings, loneliness sets in and chips away at the choice to free ourselves of restraint. What are we left with once we escape the static of our lives? As pieces of our journey become suspended in time how do we process the knowledge that possibility exists in every stranger? Each serendipitous meeting becomes an open door. Life becomes a manifestation of our curiosity. We let it build us.

Before trusting in my own bravery, I would question your existence. In my apartment in the city I would wonder where you were and how you lived. I wondered how you found your courage and if you still cried when the hard nights came. After leaving my front step you began to appear and as I tried my best to learn from you, the change came. I cannot tell you the exact moment it happened. There was no line in the sand, no morning of clarity as the sun crept through my window. But, without a sound, it was there. We may not be meant for the pages of a magazine but our voices have power. When the world moves us, we feel it flow through like the waves of open ocean being pulled by the moon. Tonight, as we each rest inside our own adventures, I want to thank you for sharing your journey. It drives so many far more than you could ever know.

#artofleaving #wander #wayward #love #poetry