The next step...

I was walking to my room, bag slung on my shoulder, not so heavy, just it hanging about my waist made it noticeable, the way it would sway from side to side while I strode. tap. I listened to the squeak of my left shoe as my heel pressed to the ground and rolled onto the toe. tap. I wasn't thinking anything, just striding, confident in the previous half of my day. tap... tap... tap. I watched the dark spots form intermittently on the asphalt as I walked, staring down at my shoes. tap, tap, tap. As I watched my shoes, white, clean spots started appearing on their tongues. tap tap tap tap. When my foot left the ground it was firmly planted in the dirty pine smell, the smell of drying mud and asphalt, the smell of clouded humidity, but when it landed I was walking down a dusty, rutted road. Pieces of straw blew about me as I walked towards the old green pick-up parked just off the road. Oh the smell, the luxurious smell- never do you notice the smell of dust until you smell it suddenly mix with moisture- as the drop hits the ground, the crater of silt spews out in all directions and smell of water making everything clean drifts to your noise. You revel in it, you clothes your eyes for a minute and you dream of all the wonderful things on this earth, the good things God made, and you are confident that this smell is one of his greatest triumphs. It moves you to the core. You take your next step, your foot, dirty and hot and uncomfortable stomps the ground, sending more silt shooting off like ash from a volcano. The rain runs down the back of your neck, soothing the itch and grime and sweat left by the hay and the dust and the sun. That is the second you realize yourself a poet, a romantic, not one that is published in books or that is heard by people, but in your heart you know that you were created to create. Your heart beats faster to match the rain spattering the ground and the windshield. You feel alive like the roaring, beating engine. You smile at the earth being made clean, the dust becoming a rich brown, the dusty covering washed away to become the most vibrant beautiful colors, and you focus with all your might to embed it in your mind. And you yearn with a hopeful heart that you will have someone to share it with. Can you ever describe it in a way that does it justice? I think not, it's something that you have to see. It's not exotic or rare, at least to some. It's a gorgeous commonality. A perfectly ordinary but wonderful experience. And a place so close to my heart that no matter how many times I am displaced, I will always know home.

As I drove home, the straight, wide, yet somehow spindly, road tosses me, the whimsical boy, to and fro as I lose myself, dreaming of another. I wished I wasn't alone.

My eyes came back into focus at the clicking of the door as I swiped my card. I remembered her, I remembered that day, the thoughts, the feelings, the loneliness. And my mind finds it hard to wrap itself around the concept that she wasn't with me always. Because it feels like she has woven herself into the very memories of myself, down to the deepest level of what makes me... me. And I know that someday, it won't be mere descriptions, she'll experience it with me. The spring time air, the smell of dew on the tall sagebrush as you drive, slowly, through a dark desert morning.

The rush of cool air on a hot face as you drive through rolling fields of lava rock and high desert. The bite of a cool Sawtooth morning. The wind, forcing the tall, yellowed grasses to worship. And all of it with you.