Happy 100 Days: 33

And so I heard this tune for the first time on the drive home.
 
Like every other lonely heart on the planet, I could hear my own You whispering these promises into my aching chest. I am a fool, of course, because Giovanni was the one with six strings tuned exactly to the key of me. He is gone now because I was not ready to let him make this place our home. These were his vows to me, re-written in a language I am only just beginning to comprehend.
 
The trouble it might drag you down
If you get lost, you can always be found
 
It’s just this: greater than the longing to be lifted into someone’s love is the need to learn to do the lifting. Despite steady practice, the skill forever eludes me. It is a strange thing to come this far in a life and still be such an amateur at giving. I keep turning the key this way and that, and still, I can’t quite seem to fall open.
 
(I just want you to fall into this, Baby. Fall into me.)
 
And so when the song ends, I change the station and coast for a minute on some cheesecake pop. It does its job distracting me from the low-down pulse in that place of brine and skeletons. Crying is out of the question because I’m stuck on I-66 and need my wits about me.
 
Then, wouldn’t you know it? The song kicks in again on the new station. Phillip Phillips (I now know), weaving ribbons of comfort around his You just a breath after he had already tugged her in.
 
Hold on to me as we go
As we roll down this unfamiliar road
And although this wave is stringing us along
Just know you’re not alone
 
And against the shiver, I hear the echo of Paul Simon singing, Sometimes even music cannot substitute for tears. So I let it roil and it the current pulls me under for a minute.
 
Then, Okay.
 
Yes, okay. That’s enough.
 
No one will come. Rather, I am the someone who will.
 
I decide to let the tide recede and lift my own voice under the ice-white moon. If I could not learn to lay these promises into the open arms of Tee or Giovanni, then I will give them to the one You I do love. I give my word to my son. What I have to build, I build for him. I still have a lot to learn. Bug is where I begin.
 
If you get lost, you can always be found
Just know you’re not alone
Cause I’m going to make this place your home