Totality

I am writing this at Cheesman Park, in my favorite spot. If you’ve ever been to this park with me you know where that is. I refer to it as the slope by the bench. The bench is well known. It is one of four benches that mean anything in this park and it is the only bench that faces the southern skies where the best clouds in this state gather. The slope is marked by the bench at its summit but the slope itself is the vitality of this spot. It is a small hill under two moderate trees and one big tree. I like to sit on the side of the slope that is facing northwest towards downtown. I spent many good days here last summer, days just like this, looking at the edges of the trees above me cut by an afternoon Colorado sky.

Back then, most of those days were spent with my mind and my eyes stuck on the golden light and golden heat I had reluctantly found. I wasn’t looking for it. Most of those days were spent here with her, sitting on this slope or up by the pavilion starting to learn about each other, or at least just talking. I say that because I lay here now, writing this, questioning if I really ever even knew her. I am questioning if she ever really let me into her life, or just kept me on the side where the light from her life, the light that I recognized as real, barely touched. It was a corner that was suspended in fading light never even knowing the amount of light possible to be felt. I also question if I did the same to her, if I let her in at all, or just showed things that I wanted her to see and not the things that I truly saw in myself, the things that I hated seeing in myself, that I hated knowing that they existed within me. That is part of it. I pulled so many things back from those days. My eyes were on the potential light, not the light at hand.

I have never seen the sun-lit grass flicker like it does now. It makes me think of love and comfort and truth. I want to fall in love completely and definitely just as the grass in a Colorado summer is engulfed in totality by the perfection of the sun. Like few rare and lucky things in this world, that grass knows the source of its growth and comfort for certain. And the grass rests in calm breath bearing itself openly to the light of the sun, exposing all that it is to the heat that makes it exist. That makes it real, that makes it beautiful to my eyes in this moment. It is existing and steady in the light of the sun, and that is true. The sun is making it grow. The sun is making it better and more beautiful, helping it find its potential. That is the love that I desire. That is the love I think I have found. She is the sun above me and I have laid in front of her exposing my heart, and she decided to remain and keep shining into my life. She’s still there, even after I have shown her the soil that I grew from. Her light still warms me; she is steady above me. That is the love that I desire. And I have found it.