raybear | I'm full of foolish songs.

Today every breath draws in a living memory. I taste you, your air and scent that fills my nostrils and mouth when I’m close enough that we’re no longer touching. I taste the not-so-chaste kisses from a lunch date, smoky and salty and urgent and playful. I taste childhood springs and the heat from the sidewalk on the way home from school, afternoon freedom blowing in the windows on the bus, drowning out the screams and chatter. My mouth is filled with foods from summer barbeque and powerfully fragrant sweetness from azaleas and dogwoods and magnolias.

I look at myself in the mirror and think, I am a man who sometimes hides in his house, paralyzed by the energies of millions of bodies and unable to face the eyes and attention of anyone. I examine my legs and see something new and unfamiliar and I get excited at the prospect of getting to know it. I see my body for the first time every day. I catch my reflection in the window in the train and my first thought is to shift positions to keep from colliding the man standing on the platform before I realize the man is me and I can’t help but collide and merge into the image as it dissolves when the doors open and the night air pours in, releasing me from the metal box.

Sometimes I have this space in my gut, this empty sphere in my first chakra. It’s not a hole to be filled, but more complicated than that. It’s a space that occasionally itches and wants to be rubbed or maybe filled but only temporarily. A membrane longing to be stretched and pulled, so I can enjoy the sensation of it reforming and collapsing back into itself. I fill it with food, with cigarette smoke, with laughter. I stuff it full of images and sounds and melodies and lyrics and that point in the song where the violins swell or the singer’s voice breaks and you feel everything tenfold. My belly aches at times and I cradle myself under the covers, lying on my stomach with my hands across my chest. I feel heavy with life, not like depression but more like grounding. I’m no longer drifting off into another dimension because I’m stabilized by the fullness.

Tears originate from this place, or at least mine do. Others’ get stored there for safekeeping.

I think of those who can reach inside and touch the place. I crave those who know how. I’m craving it now. I can do it myself without any problem. Sometimes it’s familiar and I prefer that. Sometimes I’ve discovered a newness inside myself and I explore it like a new lover, intuiting where to go.

I swallow these memories and tastes from today and keep them warm inside.