Softened Sandpaper

I was old and you were old and the world so different we didn’t recognize it.  I dreamed your hand felt like warm softened sand paper and my bones felt light and fragile as a bird’s.

We were smiling, with our exhausted faces.

And then I woke up in this dry desert of a state with the smell of rain and green things in my inhale. 

My body is still strong, albeit a few pounds over ideal, and I thought about that quote I always seem to think about, “What makes life so bitter sweet that it will never come again”.  I am para-phasing, it’s an Eleanor Roosevelt one.

Remember when you worried aloud, early on, that we had so little in common? I, the day dreamer, the artist, the wanderer.  You, the thinker, the problem solver, the adventurer.

And I laughed and said I gloried in it.  The gorgeous, strange kaleidoscope of you and I.  And a little skeptical, a little bemused, you have held my hand and haven’t let go any more than I ever could of yours.

Ah our manic battles, our compromises, the raging tantrums, the astounding grace of the story that is this of you and I.