Christmas

Today was our Christmas.
Just the two of us.
He woke me up to see the snow falling...
didn't want me to miss it.
It is our first Christmas in our new home,
and it feels perfect.
Christmas day will be travel and chaos,
but today was ours.
Calm.  Cozy.  Quiet.
Peaceful.
I did a live video chat with my mom and my sister,
so we could share the fun of opening gifts.
I cried as I slowly unwrapped a gift from my mother.
I'm so far away from my family
and time is slipping through our fingers.
But I keep them close.
Homesickness is just an expression of Love,
so it added to the Gentleness of the day.
Tonight... more snow.

A white Christmas is Perfection.

What Is Left

I woke and met a stranger in my brain.
The life I had once found shelter in, collapsed
The Who of Me was stripped, raw and bare

Life has a way of  eventually exposing us all, doesn't it.
For most it may be a more gradual process.
I  certainly would have preferred a gentle evolution
but, someday, we all must learn to live with What Is Left.

This is Stroke Recovery for me -
sifting through what remains.
Trying to make it something meaningful,
even though I never would have chosen it.

Some days I find a certain grace in the remnants.

When Why's have no answer
they may then be translated into How's.

What Is Left leaves no hiding places.
There is no capacity for the counterfeit.
What feels raw and bare
is what is Real.
  Primal.

All of my Doing was rendered into Being.
And although I do not yet know how to Be,
gracefully
there is a certain freedom in being fragmented.

So maybe, after all
What Is Left, is what is Meant To Be.

Birds

My thoughts are like fluttering birds
who, every once in awhile, land together.
But the moment I move towards them,
they take to the air again.

My mind is working overtime,
chasing birds.