MAps

Someone once told me that life begins off the edge of maps. I believed him.

His hands told me that his fingers had explored the shapes of things - rocks, leaves, the bodies of past-loves.

He told me that life happens off the edge of maps and so I listened because I believed him and trusted his hands.

It was springtime. The river was still singing from the winter and it started to ask me when I would explore her. When I would finally rip of my clothes to taste her quiet joy.

I kept on trying to hush her (even though I trusted his hands).

The river kept singing and I kept finding myself tip toeing around what I knew to be true because the silence of myself and the songs of the river and the shapes of past-loves that I had yet to meet - in truth, scared me.

The more I tip-toed, the more I smiled.

Fear became my companion and soon enough we started laughing along the waters edge, talking about maps, and the shapes of things, and the more I got to know my own hands, the more I began to trust them.

I started to reach for things - first for the silence within myself - and then for the edges that would take me to places that held future memories that I had yet to know or truly believe.

Like the river, the maps started to whisper and as soon as I felt myself starting to tip toe instead of run I'd take my shoes off so that I could remember how the grass feels and so that I could remember how toes are meant to touch the earth - slow at first, and then, a stride.

I trusted his hands, and trusted my hands, and I started to listen to the river, and drank her quiet joy that sometimes sang louder than I could have ever imagined in my future memories and I allowed myself to understand the shapes of things - rocks, leaves, the bodies of past-loves and all at once the edges of maps started to make more sense.