Circles

Even this late it happens:

the coming of love, the coming of light. 

You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves, 

stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows, 

sending up warm bouquets of air.

Even this late the bones of the body shine 

and tomorrow's dust flares into breath.
- The Coming of Light, Mark Strand 

  

      I like to walk home when it rains. When I step out of the lift that takes me up from the insulated underground onto the ground floor, I feel the electricity in the air greeting me. Everything pitter patters lightly around me, and I try not to step onto the snails. All the dark brown leaves on the floor look like snails from afar, and I always pause to make sure they don't move before I carry on.

    There is a hidden symmetry in the way we live. When I walk towards the train to work in the morning, I climb up a gentle slope. The sun beats down and each step uphill seems inclined against any desire to go anywhere. When it's time to walk home from the train, I amble downhill. Even gravity wants you home. Sometimes, when I get home early enough, I watch the sun set. Not fully, because of the buildings, but a warm glow shines from ajar, like the jagged shards of a glass phoenix. 

       I like to think that all the beautiful points in our lives have circles to mark them. Circles - the perfect shape of beginning and end. You cannot see them when you are living inside of them, living out that difficult curve or reaching out hard to move on just that bit further. But, when the circle closes onto itself, you feel that tingle from the top to your bottom of your body, because your soul knows that you have reached full circle. That wonderful shining beginning with a heartfelt poignant end. That disappointing start renewed with a fresh bright energy. Just like being brought to a restaurant again by someone new to forget the bitter disappointment of that someone old. How the only time I was happy in the worrying month of June was when I visited a children's bookstore, and that was the very children's bookstore ZM surprised me in July when he proposed. We create our own bookends - we may not be able to control how something starts, but I like to think we can determine how graceful we make our ends. 

                  In these circles, we grow, we learn, we reconcile. And, perhaps when we live long enough, when we can look back on the long shadow that is our lives, we can connect all these beautiful dots together, and smile. That was, is me.