All the things I want

I want to ask you all about the meeting. And how it went. And why you were gone for so long this year.

I want to bring you home and make my mother’s split pea soup for you. Serve you a warm dinner at our heavy, wooden table with the view of the Aspen groves and Tarryall River.

I would open each and every window so that you could breathe in the pines too, as you nourish yourself at our table.

I would hope that you might find your way to sharing words with me and you wouldn’t even have to talk about that night or the others. But if you wanted to, I would listen. I want to tell you about all the ways that this is not your fault, straighten your back and help you stand without that hunch.

I want to give you a million compliments like a balm that might soothe each and every place of hurt when someone said nothing or said the worst thing.

I want to tell you that there is a room that you can enter where doors are open wide, where presence isn’t an offense and where there is no shame.

But somehow it isn’t the right place or time and, perhaps, inappropriate to do so. So when you ask for a pencil after you’ve taken your seat, I select one from my desk that is supposed to be a gift for my teacher neighbor but feels just right for you. It’s a bright plum color in a sea of standard #2 yellow with a plump new eraser at the end.

I hand it to you, you take it and open the journal to a fresh, clean piece of paper- Your words will be stars in a midnight sky and I wonder what stories you will tell of lightness and dark.

Who are the demons and saviors in your universe?

And how much light will creep in?