A Holy Kind of Happiness

Everything is changing

and I am too.

The weather is getting colder

and this is the part that I dread —

except this year,

I don't.

This year is different.

. . .

It's fall and I'm baking pumpkin bread

and standing on familiar porches

and driving with the heat on.

Here I am,

writing words for a boy who is

still writing words for his ex girlfriend.

Anything he does makes me fall apart.

He touches my hair and I fall apart.

He ignores me for the whole night and I fall apart.

Bowling Green is too small these days.

He is everywhere.

I leave the record shop and there he is,

downtown, walking toward me with a black coffee,

shaking his head, half smiling.

He tells me he had an 8 out of 8 day —

and the thought makes my head spin with warmth.

It's a holy kind of happiness.

So here I am, dreaming about that night in July

and an alternate universe

where we actually have a chance.

This I am sure of:

in another life, we would have made it.

Perhaps this universe will be kind to us, too.

. . .

I hate that all my writing

sounds the same these days.

I want to give up and quit,

but I know that I am on the brink

of something meaningful.

Something worthy.

It's an ordinary Tuesday night

and I'm sitting outside again.

Cutting open old wounds

and finding healing in the silence.