a list of things I would like to do with you...

By Waylon Lewis

I have a list of things I would like to do with you.

It has not been a month, or a week, or four days. It has been my whole lifetime since I have seen you. I have sailed out to sea every morning, waking when it is still dark. The stars light against the cold sky, unraveling what my wiry hands had coiled up the night before. It has been too long, so long that I did not know you until I met you and said goodbye again to you - a lifetime without your friendship.

I would like to see you.

But I would like to have been alone for these many years.

Alone gives me strength, stability and clarity in my direction. I have tried on different loves and thrown them off and others have tried my love and tossed me off. Nearly all have been good, and kind, or shallow but fun, and I have appreciated all of them, if only perhaps for a season, and they perhaps have appreciated me, and we are still friends, if still in touch. But they did not make me dream again: an excitement and simultaneous fear of loss that is gratifying and humbling.

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Interesting read on nytimes.com: Seeking the Comfort of an Old Flame: Solitude