I
try to outline the shadows stuck with me this summer, but my fading spirit
makes me draw outside the lines. I want to fill in every single color I’ve seen
but I can’t help it that I was born colorblind. I want to connect all these
pieces but they all look broken as they surround me.

            Will
these be footnotes? Will they be distant echoes? Will they be like the beautiful
contrail in the sky on a summer evening? Drifting until it’s gone?

            I’ve
taken notes and made memories and tried to carve these things on my soul and my
skin. But it’s too easy. It’s too easy because I know me. It’s too easy to find
the next fascinating thing.

            There
are the bells and the strings and the keys. There are the voices of angels to
accompany them. There are the smiles and the hands held to the sky. There are
all the ingredients to a wonderful concert. These are the things I’ve seen.
Over and over and over.

            So
time please stand still cause I want to relish the joy. I don’t want to do the
thing I do all the time and become a cuckoo and slip outside the clock and
shout out loud. I want to stay in this moment for just a little longer. For
just a little while longer.

            I
would like to stop thinking ahead and to stop looking behind. But I’m paid to
do both in different ways. I have to. There’s no way I can’t. I make a living
stirring my thick cauldron full of emotion and memories and feelings. I know
every ingredient inside and I constantly pick and choose.

            They
certainly are overflowing this summer.

            The
fall will soon follow, however, and then the winter will be there.

            I’ve
written blogs I haven’t posted. I’ve taken snapshots nobody else has seen. I’ve
made promises only God has heard. To make myself remember.

            But
the familiar hands of time tend to make you forget. Those daily doldrums. The
buzzing stress. The strokes of pink everywhere. The flatness of this place. The
fast forward nature of time and how it slips away from you, day after day after
day.

            Will
August meet September and find a new memory to make only to forget June and
July?

            Will
the scars on the soul only be replaced by new ones?

            Will
the hope held in these hands slowly drip away and dry up like salt water?

            The
night questions the joy just like shadows covering the light. I know the
answers but man do I still find myself followed by a hundred familiar
questions.

            This
summer has been a backpack of answers. I’m still wearing it and I’m still
climbing that mountain.

            I
don’t plan on coming back down.