Liv in a Life Well-Lived

He smelled like rain. He walked past me and his scent reminded me of open windows and twilight. Of water dripping and umbrellas drying in the hallway. I didn't think I would have such a reaction to these, but it opened up a hunger inside me that made me want to swallow raindrops and reach for thunder. I want to embrace the lightning I saw when he passed me by. These yearnings, they make me almost believe I am still alive --- that I have a heart that is yet to love and that there is a future yet to be lived. It almost convinces me that one day, I will open a door and realize what stood there was the reason why I had been living my life. One night, I might look up at the sky and just know, all of a sudden, that life is complete. These are the things the dead dreams off: the flame that gives off warmth; the touch affirming the capacity to feel. The intensity of need --- for reality to bend and make one live again after having died and suffer existing all the same. It's like a perp...

Have you ever gotten that tight, achy feeling in the middle of your chest and you know it isn't sadness but something else? It gathers in your breast and it threatens to surge up your throat, and it isn't like you're going to be sick all over the place either. It is not happiness, but it is light just like it. It isn't anger or grief and it dosn't feel like confusion. It feels like it is sure and solid and it is pulsating and trembling inside you. On top of everything else, it is warm and it feels like its billowing within and that if you let it, it would burst from out of your chest like a star and rejoin its family in the night sky. It's almost like Hope. You know, that feeling you get when it dawns on you that there is a chance that something beautiful is about to happen? It isn't just a mixture of bliss and joy but something painful as well? But right now, it's still somewhere dark, and it couldn't find a way out. A part of me says it isn't c...