Pick Your Battles or Live and Laugh With Them All

It’s ironic, really, but that’s life.

I think I can lay convergence to rest. I think I can smart my way through familiar patterns and ways, like darning an old quilt.

The ex writes and says he’s low, wants some company, signs his email “with love.”

“Dinner and a movie” nights with DT quickly turn into an excuse to be physically close, to sleep over at each other’s houses, to expand the boundaries of friendship. We’re both thumbs up but can I rationalize this? It’s an old ghost, and one I usually fall in love with and regret later. I’ve put down my boundary with my body (which is progress), but what fence can hold back the heart? And what of lust, the old burrowing beast that moves under fences and tree roots and rivers, through anything to get what it wants. What’s that they always say, Pick Your Battles?

I walk outside to get some fresh air, grabbing a handful of things I set at the door as a reminder for myself. I keep a basket in my car at all times full of stuff that belongs to other people that I need to return to them. When I’m out and about around town, I run into folks and can return their belongings. Today, I carried Parker’s Taoist book and DT’s frying pan from the other night. I put them in my car and stand in the driveway, staring up at the graying clouds. The phone rings and I do not rush back to the house to answer it.

Later, when I check the messages, I hear that it was Parker. He’s in town for a few nights to apprentice with a local MD. We haven’t seen each other since before my trip and right before he moved to UniversityTown, NC. There are no bad bones between us, but lord if I didn’t just put his book in my car “just in case” I ran into him sometime. Conveniently, he needs a place to stay. And conveniently, I am laughing at the world and saying yes, even as I see history folding in on itself right before my very eyes.

I think I’ll need to take an herbal sleep aid if I actually want to get some rest tonight. Everything inside of me feels like it is stretching and growing, like sphagnum moss after a rainstorm. The possibilities are endless and that is precisely what could drive me truly, completely, once and for all, nuts.