quiet rivers

In my heart’s eye, I am frozen on a field of glittering stars draped over velvet night; stars spelled into proximity by my sight, stars realized into unspeakably-untouchable distance. I see a light slashing across that field; falling or climbing, I could not tell for sure; but plucking at my vision, like a loved song to the heart. In my heart’s eye, I yearn for the impossible.

How must I measure desire? Those things I have walked away from? People whom, for one reason or another, I have left behind? Family and friends, the moments I’ve shared with them in long times past call across the distance of years. They trouble me most when I am least prepared, they troop in across my consciousness like ants to a piece of bread and enfold me with their pathos. And overwhelmed, I could not, thus, balance their value in the scales of my life against the coin of what I have become. I am made by the quality of my desires, unmade by their quantity.

I think about it more, and I realize that, most times, the ones I know weigh less than the sum of desires that don’t even have names. As much as I dread the unknown, so do I long for it.

How do you measure desire? Those things which task your endurance? The impossible love, the unmanageable selfishness which color the landscape of your days; how do you measure them against the obligations that bind you to where you are?

I long for the days when the simple, by the manner of its own cleanness, was its own joy and its own reward. I yearn for the days when black was black, white was white, and to go onward was but to step forward.

In my heart’s eye, I am embraced by velvet night, looking and yearning for the glittering stars. And I realize the simple reason why they seem so fascinating was that they were manifestations of everything I have ever dreamed of and about. And I wonder now, what might happen if I ever stop dreaming, or never look at stars the same way.

In my heart’s eye, I dream. In my heart’s eye, I am desire.

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