Unnamed Thus Far

PROLOGUE

I believe you can only fall in love once. The word fall describes perfectly the feeling that you experience that first time. It’s wild, free and you never once stop to think. It is not until you have been hurt by that first love to know what falling in love feels like and know that losing that first love is not something you want to experience ever again. However, when you do find that second love it is a much slower, much less freeing feeling. It is a mixture of hopelessness and fear paired with unmeasured joy and happiness. In a way, it is much more beautiful to find yourself in love the second time around or third time around. To allow yourself to love someone through all of the uncertainty is placing a great deal of hope and trust in someone. And that, in retrospect, is beautiful.

                I fell in love once. It was with the neighbor boy and we were sixteen. He was my best friend. Every night before his mom got sick we would sneak out to the tree house in the backyard, sit, and plan great adventures that we would embark on together. Eventually as we grew, the promises we made changed, the way he looked at me changed, and I never realized what was happening until that first kiss. It was as if my heart had fallen out of the tree house and left me stranded in suspension with him. I was not scared, I was liberated.

Cas was the goofy type with a heart so full of compassion I could never live up to. He was the kind of boy that made the world light and brought a smile to every face he passed in the day. He always had those corny jokes to spit out and his hugs were so warm and comforting it was as if you could live and die peacefully in his arms. In short, he was the polar opposite of the second man I ever loved. Dark, distraught, full of anger and fear and barely could be said to be human. Yet the way I loved him was so powerful that even though the world was telling me to run away, I could not have done the more opposite thing fast enough...

Mother Nature's Lessons

The smell of the rain on the hot blacktop. I could be Julie Andrews singing “My Favorite Things.” When I smell that smell, I am transferred back in time to sitting in my Mema’s house in the summer. The windows would be cracked open and the blinds drawn. Outside the rain would slam onto the ground, creating a low deep blur of noise. The room would be dark and the smell of the rain would waft through the semi-open window with the breeze. The world had a tint of darkness, but the smell of the fresh rain, of rejuvenation, transformed the gray. Occasionally you would hear a car pass, slowing down at the stop sign. Its wet tires would only briefly be there, before it was gone again. The house would be completely silent. Occasionally a rumble of thunder would shake the house ever so slightly and young me would be excited. Is it that memory that makes the warm weather rain one of my favorites? While everybody else complains of its mugginess or of their hair frizzing, I make a cup of coffee and I sit on the porch. Just like when I lived in the mountains. The storms were always so much worse the higher up you were. We were high. The sky would get a malicious color and the clouds would spin and twirl as if trying to warn us. The tree’s leaves always fascinated me when they blew. One side was vibrant green and the other a dull mint color. The lightening would strike in beautiful streaks right in front of us. The power would be out and we would light candles and retire to the porch where we would sit on the rocking chairs and just watch. It was terrifying. I could feel the earth shake under my feet, but I never looked away. There were always rainbows afterwards and my sister and I would climb the trees, the bark squishy and wet, just to try to see the end where the pot of gold surely sat waiting.