...

I’m familiar with the razor wire.

A low fog hangs beneath the trees, and a dear peers with curiosity at the joyful sounds at the foot of the hill, where joyful sound doesn’t exist… until.

We are laughing in a place that doesn’t always welcome laughter. I smile at my peers and reel into myself, like a line cast out unto treacherous waters … trepidation for my catch … fisher’s of men
I do not laugh.
long since
have I been a fish.

We do our dance with security, I know the waltz well. I wait patiently gazing at the windows of cells and recollect a time I gazed out narrow windows that forbade grass or sky and I
wait.
We passed the gates and made our way to the arts room, we are greeted by kinsmen of a different brood, yet kin still the same. And in sharing our art, our love, and pain – we witness weapons melt away and armor falling down.
Behold the soft white under belly.
A piece of me feels defensive for them, as they bathe in the love and light that has been brought to the alter. I falter and fathom my conflict. Nature versus nurture … thought versus reflex and I have to make meditated effort to not try to protect them from what we all came to do.
Heal the wound.

They smiled. They sang. They laughed as we laughed … and when we cried … they adjust their eyes … and I … held my own tears on their behalf.

I began to swell with the pregnant sorrow in the room, and like a woman who gives birth too soon – I prematurely labor in my own sadness. Melissa sang a song with Ken
” I hope to get over you again”

and as I mourned for my own memories of love and love lost, I am reminded of a common train of thought – regardless of the path we walk -
we love
and we grieve at it’s loss

today we love again.