The heart thief knocked so softly, I almost didn’t hear the rapping at my door.
 
I was not expecting anyone, nor was I looking for company.
 
I peered through the small window in the door, the light from my porch reflecting particles of dust, floating slowly with the breeze.
 
As I stood there staring at this man with hair my favorite color rose, he looked back from the other side of the small glass pane, and the walls around me melted, the sounds disappeared into a heartbeat, and the temperature rose 20 degrees. Diamonds slowly seeped out of his heart shaped eyes, the color of my favorite dress, glittering and sparkling. He smiled and my entire essence left the inside of my body and began to pop and spritz on the surface of my skin.
 
I could not stop myself from opening that door. Conflicting screams of “I should not” and “I need to” battled silently in my thoughts as my hand reached for the doorknob. 

I’ll meet you in our next life
When we can plan ahead
I’ll try to make a memory
Of everything we said
 
Our wishes, hopes, and dreams
For a life of you and I
As we play our favorite songs
And slow dance in the sky
 
We’ll have the things we don’t have now,
We’ll have it all by then,
A quaint old house that you adore
We dreamt of way back when
All you want and all you dream
We’ll fill it with our love
We’ll laugh and dance and live the lives
That we both once dreamt of

I’ll be your first love
You’ll be my last
You’ve got your future
My future’s past
 
Just like the light
stays ahead of the dark
I’ve seen the fire
You’ve seen the spark
 
Can’t grab the brass ring, while we beat as one
Your ride’s just starting, mine’s almost done
I’m overwhelmed enough, to fill the moon
But I’m in my Winter you’re in your June

The sun begins to set over my own personal day. It doesn’t matter what time it is. I can feel it begin to go down on me and I have no way of holding it up or stopping my light from dimming and going very, very dark.
 
There is water at my feet that wasn’t there a second ago. The water is moving, and swirling silently, slowly. It doesn’t stop, and I know soon what will happen. I’ve been there before.
 
The water rises, while at the same time, my sun descends, the light dims as the swirling water begins to engulf me. To my knees, my waist, my belly.
 
Eventually, the sun and the water will touch, and all the colors will disappear.

I see the light of your eyes in the words that I hear you say
And hear the laughter you share to spread joy on a warm summer day
I see the form of your curves in the light of the cloudless moon
As you whisper my name in the still of my lonely room
 
I get lost in the warmth of your arms when the late day is done
I taste the heat of your skin as we try to press two into one
I feel your soft breath against me when nothing is left to be said
And sense you beside me as I lay by myself in my bed

​Look at me, looking at you
It’s all I ever seem to want to do,
Look at me, I’m a mesmerized fool
There’s a whole world out there waiting for you
 
What am I thinking, where does this go,
A million different answers, that I don’t know,
Wherever I am, you’re always there
If I turned to vapor, you’d be the air

Guns, or too many of them, are the hot topic conversation as a solution to one of our largest societal problems… gun violence.
 
But like any problem that holds us all hostage, there is no one simple solution. Doing something about all the guns that are in all the hands they should not be in, is part of the solution, but it’s going to take a lot of grimy, down in the dirt give and take, to figure out how to find all the solutions, and how to put them all to work. Together. As a well-oiled machine against anguish and death.
 
This violence, and this death, doesn’t just occur to someone. It comes from the deep, lonely, frightening, and self-hating black abyss, that is the mind and heart of so many mass shooters.

 If I could lie beside you, and softly stroke your hair
​While worlds break down around me, I’d think that to be fair
To be there in your presence, to kiss your day good night
To feel the warmth pour from you, cast by your inner light

I'd feel so complete that,
it would fill my inner core
Except to hold you in my arms,
one thousand years or more

So I took a walk today
Cause I kind of wanted to hear
What nature had to say
When it whispered in my ear
 
And I walked past all these houses
With their windows opened wide
Hearing snippets of the stories
Of the lives that lived inside

Thoughts of you are constant,
the smiles wistful,
and intermittent many times throughout the day.
You will always come to mind,
on the days when the sun rises,
and the moon comes out at night.

I think time, both speeds up and slows down, as you get older. Not at any specific age, but whatever age a person is when they finally realize time is running out. Maybe not next month or next year, but whenever that very late stage of life hits you.
 
Quite possibly, it speeds up because your body fails more frequently and more easily. The increments when you feel older than before get closer and closer, like highway mile markers as you drive faster. Maybe life just seems to speed up because you desperately want it to slow down. On the other hand, maybe it slows down because as you enter into those later years, the details of life, the micro parts, develop a routine and life of their own.
 
I’ve been talking a lot with my father lately. That part isn’t unusual. He’s almost 95, 

You…. were born with buckets.
 
Not the kind of buckets that hold water, but the kind of buckets that reside inside, and hold the things you hate about yourself.

When will I cease to be
Drift away, drift away
I won’t be me to you someday
 
When will I die to you
Fade to black, fade to black
Once I’m gone I can’t come back

The old man shuffles away slowly,
each movement making joints ache
in a discordant cacophony.
Each step,
a trial of balance.
But inside, he is young, proud,
and full of a life and spirit
from a younger man’s day.

Your lipsticked lips
Brush against my fingertips
And chills crawl up my spine
I’ve known it since I met you
That I just got to get to
Make you mine, mine all mine

I'm tired and it's time to go, it's been a long road.
I've lived such a cherished life, and I’m not owed
I've done my share and I know, I've had my say.
And in my heart I know that, I don't regret a day.
 
But now it's time that I drift my way back home
From where I came, I'm going back there now
I'll be leaving all the ones I love and know
But now it's time for me to go back home

Don't you cry for me sweet baby, wipe your eyes for me sweet girl
I'll be in your heart sweet baby, don't you cry for me sweet girl
Don't you cry for me sweet baby, wipe your eyes for me sweet girl
I'll be in your heart sweet baby, don't you cry for me sweet girl

My wife and I were getting ready to go out with another couple for dinner. She was changing, and I was just lying on the bed, playing with my phone. She asked me if I was going to change. If I hadn’t gotten the feeling she was trying to send me a message, I might have been more open to the possibility, but I did get that feeling, and I ended up telling her I was probably going to go the way I was.
 
This was after, earlier in the week, I left the house to go to work dressed in a way she didn’t feel was appropriate. We disagreed then too, and I left without changing.
 
I’ll admit, I become kind of obstinate in those circumstances, maybe because so much of my life is out of my control. Whether it’s managing my business, taking care of my family, or maintaining our home, how I conduct my own life is the only thing I actually have control over. So maybe I have a heightened awareness of not giving any of that control away. Which doesn’t mean I’m totally self-centered. I just want to be the one who is in control of me, without feeling obligation to someone else’s judgement.
 
Either way, my wife reacted by getting angry and telling me it seemed like I didn’t 

I often think about all the milestones that mark a life, all the real significant moments that go by with hardly any thought at all.  
 
For instance... a 48 year old ... this very day, this very minute, may be at the exact mid-point of his or her entire life. It's like... "Wow! Ninety six years, and this is the exact middle!". And yet... it just goes by and there's no thought to it at all. We don't even know it. It's hugely significant in a "lifetime achievement" kind of way. Every one of us goes through their mid-life point in time, and not one single one of us can

I was caught the other night in what could only be described as a classic “Shower Thought”.
 
There are a lot of experiences men and women share.
 
A lot of them are perceived similarly…. Driving, maybe eating a meal, bowling.
 
Some of them are perceived differently, but usually there’s something thrown in that makes the actual situation different for each. For instance, a husband and wife could go to the same hospital at the same time, but really, it’s the mother giving birth, and the father feeling a bit helpless or faint.
 
I think there’s very few circumstances as similar and as opposite at the same time, as the classic “Bar Scene”.  

****This was originally written in September of 2006, when my daughter was nine years old... 
-------------------------------

 My 9 year old daughter forgets things all the time. She'll forget her binder, she'll forget her glasses, she'll forget to clean up after herself. Basically, if something was supposed to be done, and she was supposed to do it, there's a good chance she'll have forgotten it. "But I forgot!" is usually the phrase I hear just before the reprimand comes. I can't be alone in all this. There must be a billion other parents who hear the same thing. Every day.

Why am I sure of that? Because I used to say it all the time when I was her age. It takes effort, but I have to remember that. I said it so often, my sister nicknamed me “Coma”. As a matter of fact, I said it so many times, I even developed a theory for it that I tried, unsuccessfully, to use to my advantage. It went something like... "But if I forgot, then I wasn't thinking about it. I can’t be disobeying if it wasn’t even in my mind. So how can I be faulted for not doing something I wasn't even conscious of?" Not bad for a little kid.

The fact that I thought it up in the first place though, probably means I needed to because I forgot so often. It helps me now when my daughter forgets something. I know I have to teach her responsibilities, but it helps to keep in mind that she's 9, and 9 year old kids will do that. It's been that way forever. Or at least since I was 9.