I wasn’t expecting to be here,
in the mountains I don’t know,
with my guard falling like the leaves. Burnt orange.

Burned.
Burned but not blackened, that’s how I see myself.
Golden.

There’s something in the air, up here.
Or, more accurately, there’s something that isn’t in the air, something missing,
like a giant’s trundled his way through Dalton and plucked all it used to be.

The clouds are tumbling over one another,
fighting their way southeast,
leaning toward warmer months.

I’ve learned to lean, too,
lean, then soar,
and that’s why I love these clouds.

In the south,
in embroidered long-sleeves and creased boots
also mold and eyelid rashes

I’m remembering something. Something I lost, something I’m recovering, something that was taken from me, bit by bit, like a Renaissance man chips away marble. I can taste it. I can see my vision blurring, my chest pulsing, my blood boiling.

It’s these things I’ve learned to listen to. These things I was forced to learn to listen to, not just for my own sake, but for theirs. For His.

There’s complexity in the subtlety, that’s true.
But there’s simplicity in the complexity.
And simplicity in everything.

It’s why I’m falling for these mountains,
falling like their oak leaves,
like their modest waterfall(s).

It’s a simple life. A barnyard. An ox, a couple horses that breathe deeply. Wheel barrow afternoons, suppers in copper pots, rope ‘round gnarled trunks instead of tense necks.

White teeth. Dark, black, bitter coffee. A boy with tousled, orange hair. His father, in overalls, with a hatchet. A wraparound porch, a place to watch time creep by, watch afternoons slip away, watch mornings creep skyward. Sturdy bedposts. Scratched-up wooden floors. Dirt roads. A wannabe cowboy, a dusty grand piano. Tattered books atop maple shelves, the smell of clean laundry and autumn year round. Dirt. Ink. Glittering, dewey grass. The wear and tear of it all.

Cuffed sleeves. Clean jeans. Stubble.

This is the life I’m waiting for. This is the one I’m working toward, the one I’m building, the one I feel manifesting slowly, oozing from deep within my ribcage.

And when my lodgepoles are stripped of their bark,
when my toes are worn away by the blacktop,
when I’m medicated and readdicted into oblivion,
I know,
now and forever,
that this is all that will be left.

Cracked teacups,
worn leather spines,
and crooked pottery.

To hold me.
To keep me raw,
but fearless,

forevermore.