You weren’t born broken, you were born whole and perfect and then broke yourself.
You were everything this world needed: open-hearted, soul-guided, optimism-filled
The world smiled at you and wanted you, all of you.
The irony was the whole world saw in you what you couldn’t
It loved you more than you could ever love yourself
Your heart was too large for its own cage, you passionately and naively loved the entire world around you and your heart expanded to the point it ripped windows in your paper-skin for us to see the chaos that lurked in your mind underneath your brilliant, beautiful shining surface
And now California’s taken you to your safe place where not even you can harm yourself
and for that, I’m happy
You’re now in your cloud-covered California haven, nestled between the redwoods and the Great Pacific, with pine needles in your sandy beechwood hair and pine sap between your fingertips. You let the California sun thaw the Maine goose bumps on your skin and the Northern California rain to trickle along the corners of your mouth that curled like fiddleheads as that smile the world hasn’t seen in years becomes wider and deeper than the Sacramento Valley itself
But where’s my California? You left me with more missing pieces than I started with. We loved each other more than we could ever love ourselves and now California’s wrapped you in her lush, evergreen cradle to keep you safe from your own mind
but now all I’ve got is myself
Just me to strangle my own thoughts snipping my heartstrings, cutting ravines in my heart and soul deep enough to scar to make me remember I’ll never get to feel those incense-stained cheeks on my chapped lips. I’ll never get to pull long strings of golden sandalwood hair off my coats and sweaters. I’ll never get those brisk, autumn nights when we were snug inside watching Ghibli and ghosts and going nowhere
Where’s my California? I want her to take me away just like she took you, to coddle me in her dew-covered, fern and moss blankets. Where are my towering redwoods? Where’s my evergreen coast? Where’s my Arcata, my Mount Shasta, my Eureka? You needed her and she answered and now I’ll be waiting for my California to come and hold me with her pine sap kisses and misty embrace and the salty, setting sun-kissed Pacific to sing in my ears
that everything will be okay
and that I’ll finally be safe.
When’s my California coming for me?
Photo of Flickr user Nicolas Raymond
