I started this while still living in Idaho with my wifey. Before I left my future and everything else we were building. Leaving behind that anchoring thought, leaving her, I never wanted. Until I realized that I was making a choice between being near my son as he grew into manhood and being with someone who never trusted me and never would.
I made the right choice, even if it’s the most excruciating experience I’ve endured. I made the right choice for him, even if the narrows I’ve been wading through for six months threaten to drown me every damn day without a break.
I knew this was a love I wouldn’t recover from.
Every day I repeat my mantra and hope it will take root deep behind my sternum, and I’ll be able to breathe again.
“Love without trust is control.”
In the meantime, I’ll paint and write and not waste another moment with my son. My sun. The gentlest slender heart-on-spindly-legs I’ve ever encountered.
And meanwhile I’ll be a barbed girl, wandering amongst the cacti, because they know my cries for relief, sweating this love out of my pores in the Texas sun. Untouchable. Safe.
A Burd in Flight 