i confess, i cannot save you

I am back to a place of patience today. At least in this moment. I am there. Here. I have been reading Shining Affliction. I have been listening to Sigur Ros. And I am now sitting in the sun at the phoenix airport.

I went to the pool around the corner from my grandma's house last night. Laid there and called my friend nat. Ended up crying on the phone with her. There in the sunlight, in my suit, by the pool. Crying. Where I moved in the process of the phone call feels really important. I had just had a conversation with my sister walking to the pool and back, where, once again - once every visit, I felt her despair and (foolish) hope in writing letters to movie stars. Wanting so desperately to be heard, for her life to change, for her desire to be heard and met. Even now, I wonder what, of her desires, will be met. Ever.

I felt myself pulled into the despair of that unmet desire in her. Into the desolate landscape of her heart – and I say desolate from my perspective. Though, I imagine it is truly rich and fertile ground, watered with tears and abundant in a hope less marked by fear than I will ever know. I make up for her lack of fear, lack of protection, as fear mounts and readies itself in my throat. Jessica, oh Jessica. I lose myself in the landscape of your heart. Is it because I do not see as you do? Because I cannot understand the hope you wear so graciously? You do not ask me to make up for your lack of fear. Nor, do I imagine, would you ever want me to. You are a woman full of desire and I am threatened by your fullness. My fear only intensifies as I witness its fullness. And so maybe it is not your fear which swells restlessly in my chest, but my own.

(I could not wear such pure desire – even if it is for a moviestar's life in Las Angeles and someone who will "talk to her and do things with her." I believe, as she knows a fullness of desire I do not, she also knows a loneliness i could not bear.)

Which brings me to my next realization: I am surrounded by people with desires, unmet - expectations. My grandmother, my great aunt, my sister, old friends in St. Louis. And I am full. I am overflowing, overwhelmed. (And seeing them I am only so aware of my failure or pending failure.) But their desires are lovely. My desires are….yes. I am too full. I am ready for my own desires to swell and speak within me, as they have waited in suffocation and fear for many many years. And those years, in this moment, I remember with utter compassion and empathy….and lastly, resignation.

Which brings me to the next realization.

I cannot save them. Any of them.

And, oh, how grave and somber this makes me. (And how relieved.) The sound of those words in my own voice into the phone. Through tears. Their taste, their weight. For how I love them, how indeed, for these people, I have wept on my knees, on my face.

There is a longing there I cannot meet. Nor will, honestly, any of these circumstances fulfilled. These desires are meant for something greater. Much greater than me, greater than what lies here for us, I think.


Maybe it will be what we wake up into when this life passes. I pray.