3am thoughts of sap and porch swings.
Shades of blue,
Changing to black.
Inhibitions set free.
Fireflies lighting up the sky and sap stuck to our thighs from sitting under maple trees dripping with goo.
The fresh pine smell and wild raspberries. The honey bees, then mosquitos and beetles.
The limitations non-existent, the world was ours.
But then you left. You told me life wasn’t all as simple as we wanted it to be. We grow up and things become real you said. And that maple trees, and porch swings, and cold lemonade on a hot summer day wouldn’t be enough to make us happy our whole lives.
You needed more, you wanted to see the city.
But I miss our whispers in the night, your humming to all the old country tunes on the radio, the adventures, even risks, and all the honey biscuits that went stale but we kept insisting to get from the market although we only ever ate one each before we put them away to throw them out in a week. Yet we kept buying them. It was sort of our thing. I still do it, but I eat yours too before I let the rest go bad. And I think of you every time I’m collecting sap to make our famous syrup. Wish I could tell you that this year my syrup won #1 in town. You always told me I could do it.
I miss you.
I still sit on porch swings and watch the sky change from different shades of blue to black, as the fireflies come out and dance to our favourite songs on the radio, and it’s enough. I knew it was all I’ve ever needed. I need nothing else in terms of materialistic things. Don’t need glam, city lights, stages, or huge night clubs. I don’t need to live in a world of competition, where your neighbour makes you feel inadequate for not having enough, instead of helping you get enough. I don’t need my mind to be clouded by greed and temptation. In fact I want no where near any of these things.
But I do want you. My simple life is enough but I never knew it’d feel this empty without you.
All the things that make me happy are only successful in bringing me joy when I forget you for a bit. Until I realise I’ll never do these things with you again.
I wish you’d come home. And if you don’t, which I’m now sure you won’t, because you told me that the city life was all you could’ve wished for and more and I’ve learnt that my enough is not yours and sometimes I wish I knew how to make it so, but I get it now.
So, when you don’t come home and you’re off doing your thing, I hope you somehow know that there will always be a not so fresh honey biscuit and cold glass of lemonade waiting for you. And I’ll be here, living my simple life, hoping that you found what was enough for you as I have for myself all those years ago.
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