Oh, if I could make sense of it all!

I think I'm nearly ready to keep record of how many down and out days suddenly bloom a glorious day in the same calendar week. Am I the only person this happens to?

I treated Saturday night like indoor recess. Store meeting bright + early at the lover-ly 7:00 AM hour stacked ever so neatly atop my 10-6 shift. A seemingly dull end to the weekend that brought us the madness of Tom's birthday (and the legend born of a party suddenly ended in the wee hours of the morning due to the fury of one man over the now famous magic cards floating in the fish tank).

Pulling the warmth and the darkness over me and taking the requisite 1-2 hours unlocking my head, suddenly I was thinking about Her. I say 'Her' in a religious sense only because Love is my religion and because She gave me a definition to those words: 'Religion', 'Love', 'Beauty' & 'Life'. While only being a brief love interest in the relationship sense, She remains a guardian angel walking the earth; just like a lighthouse from the past that guides me through the future.

She travels as if on a breeze; to Europe and across the Americas, calling home where she lay her hat. I have not seen her in over a year. Lying in bed it was apparent that a glowing '2:00 A.M.' from an alarm clock was not going to quiet what I suddenly had to do. It was as if the planets had aligned in the form of believing I had the words to do it and the courage to create it without pulling out the plug halfway through. I switched on the light and the computer and I wrote. I let the letters flow through the blood in my heart to my fingers to the keyboard, winding all my feelings about the person She was and the person I was because of Her. The hours melted away.

I thanked her for helping a kid find his voice and that, "while my mother had given me life, you had taught me how to live." Towards where I felt like it was ending, I suddenly realized that there was not supposed to be a return flight from where this was going. That her path into the stars was a different one from my own and that fate may not be bringing us together ever again. I would almost say that she just then added a pure definition to a 5th word of my vocabulary: 'bittersweet'. All the belief and hope that She helped me to discover was to be what carried on from Her into each day ahead. I think about Her always.

I don't know what the future holds but I am glad that involves friends like Her. And you all. And Ms. Hagle, my first ever Valentine. Say what you will of the 'Hallmark Holiday' etc.-ness of Valentine's Day, but it is sometimes a very fun excuse to gather those you care for together and share a warm moment. I was invited down to Detroit's outdoor skating rink by her, and joining one of my best friends Nick and skating with her (and occasionally falling with/for her while trying to land that 'lift-her-in-the-air-effortlessly' Olympic maneuver), I felt that hope in another. I made her this box from materials I bought at the craft shoppe, painted it red and white and gave her her own pair of pink snowpants. She made me a cd! No one has ever made me a mixed cd before, decorated with hearts of different colors and the doodled tracklist on the sleeve. I'll have to talk about this later it's too much to capture in just a sentence honestly. I stood there alone after it was over, watching my breath fade into the Detroit night. I had belief.