The day we met

I met him one day, as I stepped outside
We’d passed each other every day.
And always there was that energy.
The kind that makes you raise an eyebrow in wonder.
The kind that sends a shiver up your back

He’d leave me speculating.
He’d leave me in awe.
He’d leave me wanting to ask a question,
Just so he would turn and look.

This day though, it was different.
We became friends that day as he swept on by.
He caught my hand up in his;
I was taken by surprise.

But that is his way.
He roams the cities and the towns,
One day he’ll trudge up a mountain top
The next he’ll dance in an alley.

Wherever his heart makes an argument to go.

Making friends, making enemies,
Making his own path and bending the trees along his way.

I didn’t feel I was like him.
He was unruly, and unkempt,
Wildly he undid the order in his path.
There were no rules, there were no limits.

And there was me.
Walking in lines.

He noticed as my hair blew up around my face
I made to calm it down.
‘Let it be’, he said.
‘You don’t know me’, I replied.

He stood back, and shook his head
‘I know more than you think. I know that you’re like me,
You rustle leaves as you walk, you move people as you meet them,
Always moving, always leaving.

But there is something else…’

And here he paused and a sadness came over him.
‘You’re like me’, he said.
He had wanted it to be true, he had wanted that bond.
But now he did not want to see his reflection in me.

I looked at him, searching for his averted eyes.
He did not know.
He did not understand.
My nervousness fell aside.

It was my turn to look at him in sadness.
He never left himself behind.
Always composed and ready to leave,
Wherever his heart makes an argument to go.

He had no home.
He made no home.
He left no bits of his heart behind
In little places.

We’re quite alike, the wind and I.
But unlike him, I’ve left bits of soul behind
Attached to bushes like memories,
In the corners of dorm rooms and the alcoves of apartments.

In the hearts of friends.

I did not eat crayons.

In the old cartoons I watched as a child, the main character would often get a devil and an angel on his shoulders who would help him reason out a crucial decision. Well, the devil and the angel never actually appear. Which of course was obvious; unless you were one of those gullible kids who ate crayons when someone tricked you into thinking that they were edible. But what they failed to tell you as a child is that even though our thoughts don’t personify into little creatures that speak either black or white and help us clearly decide what’s right and wrong; we also can’t clearly sort all that out in our minds either.

I would just like to say, I feel cheated. I mean when I started out post-cartoon exposure, it was pretty easy to make decisions; But somewhere along the way things became much more difficult. So much so, that occasionally I’ll need days, even weeks to come to a decision.

But all I have is a bunch of paper bag clothed thoughts on my ‘shoulders’, confusing the hell out of me.

And that’s how we end up with the ‘door slamming effect’. You’ve finally managed to point yourself in one direction, all your logic, all your reasoning, your history, feelings, shmeelings, all of it has finally just added up. You finally reach the critical point, the right circumstance, no time could be better and instead of walking through you slam the door in your own face and take a completely different route. One of the other paper bag thoughts jumped in and messed it all up.

Thoughts are tricky things. And on that fateful day, you won’t know for certain which one is going to sway you; until you get to the moment, on top of the snowy hill.