That's All You Knew.

I remember that one night.

I was in my front yard.

And it was dark outside, the darkest black dress my street had worn as long as I had known her.

 

It was one of those summer nights where I was pretending.

I was pretending to be okay,

Like I have been known to do.

(You know, when movements get compact, sticky... insignificant).

And I shrink in every way I know how.

That was the summer I worked with lots of teens- too many teens.

I taught yoga in hot rooms all over the city.

I babysat in fancy East Nashville homes and got way too used to smelling another woman’s breast milk.

And I was just plain anxious.

  

Anxiously waiting,

Anxiously guessing,

Anxiously moving,

Anxiously driving,

Anxiously knowing, and then... not knowing.

Avoiding the Truth, altogether.

I was living a lie,

Anxiously.

 

But on that oddly cool June night,

I don’t know what prompted me...

Perhaps out of habit, I looked up.

And I saw you.

 

I felt your weight- the part of your weight I could handle, anyway.

I felt your presence behind my knees,

At the tips of my fingers,

In the dryness of my throat.

And you stopped me.

You held me- the sky, the world.

Just watching, silently.

All you knew to do for me was watch.

That's all you knew.

But it was everything.

And all I knew to do was the next small thing, the next barefoot step toward my garden, my too-often-forgotten summer chore.

 

You tasted my sadness.

Sadness feels like too weak of a word, actually.

More like a paralysis of sorts.

I didn’t have the strength to make the hard decisions, to do the hard things.

All I know was that my plants needed water,

And that you were watching.