Listen here. 

It’s getting late in the morning. But, because the seasons are shifting, the light is only beginning to spread across the trees outside my window. The church steeples bask in the admittance of the sun rays, standing mightily over the small park they flank. I cannot hear birds, as the cold November air is driving the spring and summer swallow away, but I can imagine what they would be saying in this moment.

The water of the pond sits still, glass-like, mirroring the yellowed-green trees about her. One lone, scraggly maple bares her skeletal branches, her deep brown bark inviting the others to join her.

I sit at the countertop, oatmeal hotly waiting for my bites, bits of apples and sprinkling of brown sugar delighting my tastebuds when I oblige. The yellows and browns and oranges that fill the apartment as decor and furniture reflect the cool morning light from outside. I want to feel at peace and I am searching for it in the cold wooden floor and the black granite countertop.

The sound of my lover as he dresses for the workday whispers into the kitchen. Shuffling of underwear and zipping of pants and the easy buttoning of his shirt. His mind is elsewhere. Selfishly, I want it on me. But when he nears, I internally cower, as though lowering myself over my heart and protecting my words. I cannot explain this.

Cars and people in the distance. Coats pulled up to their ears and hands stuffed into their pockets. My own chest feels like those hands, stuffed away and trying to stay warm, but all too aware of the cold.

I think to my dreams. Are dreams meant to be shared? Do they reveal the innermost parts of our being that to share would mean to strip ourselves emotionally and mentally naked, showcasing all of the faults and traits that we do not like or do not even know they are there?

I saw my oldest brother dead in my dream. His open casket wheeling its way to the front of the church as the family grasped each other and slowly came to terms with the reality. In a single moment, I accepted his death. I accepted his lingering heart beat to be gone. I accepted and was at peace. Just then, during the soft breath of my soul allowing this reality to unfold, he sat up in his coffin with a a grin on his face, my mother sitting up beside him, where she had laid only for the journey down the aisle, not to journey to the other side. Sobs escaped me, deep and wrenching and frightening sobs. And then, in that moment, in my dream, I felt love.

My heart. Is it still beating?

The sun only climbs higher, spreads light more thinly yet grandly. Unless tucked beneath the shade, you cannot ignore her rays.