Sensory Experiences
I have not lost enough to be able to explain pain of any sort of significance. The things I know are all of beauty, stretching over this city like a blanket, lit by the twinkling streetlights. The souls I have had the luck to encounter so intimately have strewn themselves as rose petals over my life, intertwining themselves with the grace of my cold fingers. I laugh and pry into those minds, my steps light and sure as I wind my way into the channels, seeking some sort of divine truth.
I was meant for wispy summer nights, captivated by the strange, cold light of the moon. It is easy to feel the breezes of autumn and the soft patter of rain on the roof over me. I am destined to feel these things as keenly as any warm, tangible hand on my shoulder. I may be simple in the way that the hair falls around my shoulders, and the way my smiles are slow and genuine. I may be simple in the way that I groan when things don’t go my way, or the way I reprimand comments uttered in harshness and cruelty. But I do not feel simple.
Things cannot be simple when a simple nighttime walk in the spring sends shivers racing across my skin. Things cannot be simple when a slough of piano notes send my blood thrumming, all melancholy and unbalanced. I am unbalanced. Things cannot be simple when I long for pungent breezes and salty air and the sound of crashing waves. Instead I am stuck in a frozen wonderland, which is not the beauty that makes my soul spill out of my body like snow-white calla lilies out of a basket.
I know very little of beauty, and certainly nothing of pain. I am sheltered, hidden away in some cruel joke of pleasurable surroundings. It is easy to say I know pain, when I was broken many times by hands stronger than mine. Capable hands of great worth. But what do I know of worth? Still nothing at all.
Truly loving is something that is complicated, certainly happenstance – I can only recount two times. Truly loving requires the blending of two souls into knowledge and happiness. Truly loving requires an element of itself that isn’t tangible…. a certain magnetism, if you will. I have never lost that ability to love, and there is something in me that aches for it. I yearn to feel something outside of myself, without my constant self-awareness clouding each sensory memory.
I yearn for that spark that ignites when someone is standing far too close to me. I yearn for a whisper of breath across my skin. I long for shadows and moonlight and tearful recountings of all my silly experiences. I grow tired of the known…..I grow restless, resentful of the batter of the usual against my senses. I forgot what it feels like to feel the soft, reassuring pressure of lips on mine, without my distasteful reactions overpowering it.
As silly as all of this sounds, it is quite true. I need to forget my rational mind, just for a moment. I have to discard my reflexive reactions. I have to tear down these walls I’ve built around myself that keep me from really seeing, tasting, hearing, smelling, touching. I need my senses to overflow with too much emotion, and far too much surprise. I want to be overwhelmed, I want to disappear away from the known.
I know nothing of love, of pain, of worth, of heroism. I am trapped in a dark box, where all that reaches me is the grating sound of my breathing and the churning motion of my thoughts. To disappear for a bit, how nice that would be. Just to disappear a little bit.
Just to experience something again.
Love,
Amanda
"I Love You"
Sarah McLachlan
I have a smile
Stretched from ear to ear
To see you walking down the road
We meet at the lights
I stare for a while
The world around disappears
Just you and me
On this island of hope
A breath between us could be miles
Let me surround you
My sea to your shore
Let me be the calm you seek
Oh and every time I’m close to you
There’s too much I can’t say
And you just walk away
And I forgot
To tell you
I love you
And the night’s
Too long
And cold here
Without you
I grieve in my condition
For I cannot find the strength to say I need you so
Oh and every time I’m close to you
There’s too much I can’t say
And you just walk away
And I forgot
To tell you
I love you
And the night’s
Too long
And cold here
Without you