ALIVE Written by Rachel E Bledsoe

Blogger at: The Misfits of a Mountain Mama

I can breathe.

The early morning hours announce, “It is time.”

Writers, the real ones I know, keep strange bedfellows with those fleeting hours before dawn. I am no different.

The clock says 1:34 a.m. and I lay there trying to caress my troubles. There is a fixation on trying to solve every ticking time bomb at an ungodly hour. There is no solution. I rise up and fill the coffee maker, the one I named ‘The Blue Phoenix’. When the last one died, the turquoise one rose out the ashes and filtered water through the magic beans.

There was a time doctors used to prescribe pills for sleep. I stopped taking those pills in another lifetime. I don’t want to sleep through the magic. I don’t want to miss the dark early morning where the world is finally quiet. The streets are semi-empty. You can’t calm a passion.

I hear my soul yearn for it is hungry. Not for food but for something more.

Type. Type. Type. Breathe.

Hungry for people who aren’t knocking on death’s door.

“Live,” I say. The world still has a beautiful potential to be seen. If you look hard enough, you will see it too.

You will see the glistening rain fall gently onto the damp pavement. It will reflect a silver shimmer. There is a chill coming. The leaves are clinging to their final farewell. The acorns drip off oak trees. One by one, not all at once, they hit the ground with a loud thud. Soon enough heavy sweaters will hang off my shoulders and high leather boots will cover my calves. I will layer on pantyhose under my pants to keep the cold from setting in as I work outside. Today is not that season.

When the last leaf glides from a high perch on the oak tree and the first snowflake falls, there is a new season. The earth will hibernate under a white blanket and we will still go about, living. We will trudge through dirty, mud mucked snow. And in time, the whiteness will melt and fade away. Through the winter, ice will come and come again all the while trying to freeze ponds and puddles. As with years before, it will always melt into spring.

Through the dead months we still go about, living. I go about saving for one week in the summer where I swim in the warm Atlantic, and the saltwater washes away the mundane sins from daily existence. I dream about this place almost weekly, it is my happy little heaven. I get an entire week off with my boy. We eat like queens and princes all week long. No request is too big or too small to enjoy. We walk cobblestone streets and stare into the million dollar homes, we dream the big dream of ‘what if’. We force ourselves to pack and trek back to our home, back to our real life.

Still breathing.

A lot of days, I am hungry for the closeness of my lover. To have a few spare precious minutes where we can lay naked and soak in our laughter, together. To not have to wake up and part daily or work long into the night. A time where we can venture away and be ourselves again. Not just mom and dad, but the couple we were in the beginning. It is a selfish want. But, a true desire nonetheless.

To go away with him and enjoy a conversation where we don’t have to repeat ‘what was I saying?’ a thousand times over. No interruptions, just pure unfiltered blissful moments lasting longer than 23 hours. No work. No phones. No technology. A bed cloaked in an exorbitantly high thread count white linens, and our bodies together. We run fingers over the same parts we’ve always known, the only parts on another person’s body worth knowing. We are two kindred souls reconnected, bound in love and madness.

We drink and celebrate the times we’ve had and the day we are having. It is rare. And this is our last love story. The last one to be written for either of us. Damn, didn’t we write it well? I miss him and those kind of days.

Gasping sobbing breaths.

Breathe.

“Live,” I say.

Live.

Live.

Never stop living.