torn and tumbling on

I woke up this morning to a stillness so heavy and a light so crispy bright. Quiet for miles save a slight rustle of dried leaves on the cottonwood trees outside the window, golden flashes in the blinding blue sky. Then I coughed up a warm mouth full of mucus textured like curdled milk and dark green when I spit it into the sink. Could I be a little ill? I remembered waking in the middle of the night and rolling over, expecting Ryan's warm naked back to be at my side so I could wrap myself around him and kiss between his shoulders as I have done nearly every night for the past month. Standing above the sink washing the mucus down the drain, my eyes watery, my heart clenched.

None of this is easy. Not leaving Brooklyn, all my friends, Sean and Sandy, and Ryan. Not easy being home despite the tried-and-true comfort and how it slides on easy like a worn pair of anything from my past. Yet I'm not fighting it. I feel like a zoo animal being released into the wild after all these years. There's a timidity and a slight mistrust despite a deeper knowing and sense of belonging, memories awash everywhere, emotions like a box of torn photos from my life rolling down a hill, tossed down a flight of stairs, pieces with jagged edges in tumble, mixing and flying but contained in the vessel that is me – crouched down in a bleached dry pasture under a cloudless sky allowing the horses to slowly approach me, surround me with their hooves in a cloud of dust while they cautiously lower their heads to mine and slowly breathe me in with a soft and curious nuzzle, touches so slight they might only be breath. I watched a falcon circle over the field against the blinding blue expanse, tottering like a kite in the wind. some kind of magic. Strange to suddenly find myself in a world so drastically different. I realized i need to spend my time in new mexico outdoors with the magic. I hope to go on a long horseback ride into the desert soon. Hope my emotions settle. Hope for the best, with time.