Waiting for the Words

I was lost in my head, confused about who I might be, what I might be thinking.

In time, I found my way into a suitcase and onto a plane. I was my way to anywhere and I'd be landing in a place I once said, "I think I want to live everywhere." He had agreed.

That memory so stayed with me. Lately it had been haunting me, following me in a good way. Somehow my heart, my head needed another conversation. I longed to hear what the "me of then" said when we talked again this "years later" time now.

So I went and I listened in as best I could.

I imagined. I practiced. I put forth chapter and verse. I did all with a steady to what I might hear myself reveal in the spaces between the words. And the quiet came, when we sat, as friends do, in each others silent company, waiting without wondering. Thoughts coming when they came.

Then he said something that I remember this way, "It's the words. You. So much of you is about the words. What you do is the words. Wordsmith. It would be a loss to see you separate from the words."

And in a gray car on a gray rainy day, inside what he said I heard yellows and blues.

The words.

I've been waiting for the words. The words are every sunset, every cell of my fingers. The words are every hair on a baby's head. They are a summer shower. The words are the love of my father, the smile of my son. The words are this moment. They're the past and future. They touch. They triumph. They tremble. They tread and take my breath away. They are the petals on a most special sunflower. They are the rainbow that overshadows the sun.

The words are the salty tear that gently finds its way to my cheek as I write this.

I've been waiting for the words. The words are about to come.

When they arrive, my soul will shout what I was born to say.

--me liz strauss, letting me be