This will most likely be the Prologue. It came to me laying in my hammock in Spring 2021. I don’t know where it came from, other than it kind of reminds me of daydreams trying to fall asleep on summer evenings when I was about 7 years old, and it also kind of captures an actual dream I had more recently. I don’t really know how these things work…
They were dancing, like waves softly tapping on the shoulder of the shore, a gentle sway passing from her body to his. The evening breeze circling around them as they circled around each other. Her toes light as a grain of sand, the soles of his feet not going anywhere. She didn’t even know his name. He didn’t need to know hers. The scent of the other was enough. The ease in their bodies, the warmth in their fingertips grazing on the other, the moonlight shining through the deep brown pools of their eyes, it was all they needed to know.
She lay awake at night willing this to be, craving him to come find her. Her seven-year-old body not yet let in on the secrets of love, her young heart yearning for what she couldn’t help long for. The promise of meeting the One. The One, waiting for her on the hill, with the oak trees shading them from the midday sun. To lay on the earth, eyes to the sky, hand holding hand, gazing in awe at from where they’d come. To drink in the horizon, shoulder resting on shoulder, the rapture of this simple touch, letting that be enough.
If only. If only she’d waited. If only she’d listened. If only she’d loved herself enough to let herself be loved.
"I don’t really know how these things work…"
That line really speaks to me. I feel like it's been my unofficial mantra lately!