For Natalia

Napowrimo April 30th, 2022

Today being the last day of Napowrimo, I expect we will be asked to write about the month we have had. If so, them I am predicting the prompt, if not, then I am off prompt for the first time this year.
I wanted to write something that includes as many prompts and lessons I have learned this month. I hope I did it justice, I’m sure some of you will let me know – I hope.

It was the last night.
The last night of five,
He’d come here to shush his mind,
To calm his heart and let his lungs breathe.
Hers was the first smile he’d seen,
In that sacred place of which he’d dreamed.
It made him feel at home and welcome,
as he had felt in his dreams.

And in those dreams in which sunsets sang songs to his senses,
he would drench himself in peace, massage his mood with music,
let the tunes cuddle him like a giant panda cuddles its cub.
Let it rub warm balms of spice scented oils over his skin and into his soul.
Here he would open the tap on the reservoir of his stress
and let it drain, drain, drain away,
until it was as dry as the sea of tranquillity.
Its shores cracked and riven as the bark of a thousand-year-old olive tree.
He had seen four sunsets pass, could this dreaming last?

Apprehension gathered in him like school kids around a fight in the playground. Hooked on the scent of blood, dining on the adrenalin rush of the coliseum’s spectacle. Crowds of Shylocks, each demanding their pound of flesh on a contract no one signed.

It would go wrong; it will go wrong. It always goes wrong.

Perfection never lasts, it appears then slips from view, a glacier breaking into the sea.
And when no one sees the blue ice split, fall and crash, it falls even deeper, deep into the cold depths of the ocean.
His ocean was deep, very, very deep.

With trepidation lacing tight his sandals, he looked the black-winged vultures of faith in their cold, desert dry eyes, filled his lungs, locked up his thoughts and sending his heart to sleep, picked up the well-worn leather gauntlet expectation had cast at his feet.

What had he to lose?
What could anyone take from him?
What could he take from himself?
Nothing.
He had everything to gain, more than everything, he could gain what he had lost.
But his aim was not piracy of past voyages, there would be no plundering of pain’s gains.

This time he was sailing into the unchartered waters of free experience.
Free of doubt, free of the nagging twins of failure and expectation.
The matelot of the open ocean of dreams moored up on the quayside, stepped ashore and headed to his destination.
Dressed from head to toe in calmness, he walked the gangplank, crossed the boardwalk and took his seat.

The sun was hiding its face behind a bank of grey cloud hands. Their fingers falling in front of the fogged horizon.
A cooler breeze brought salt to his lips,
He ordered a drink and paid with a tip.
Tucked under his glass, he spied a note,
She’s not here, poetic irony had wrote.
She was not there.
Then, no despair.
So, she is not here?
No, she is not here.
Even smiling angels in heaven’s bar deserve a day of rest.

Now he could not share the words she inspired; words written of two worlds colliding on a page.
She would never know the mystic role, that night that only she could play.

He waited.
He waited some more.
The sea still caressed the shore, and in caressing that, caressed him more.
No crushing heavens fell, no snorting horses appeared to drag him to hell, to roast his flesh over sulphur fires,
His shadow didn’t fade from sight or expire,
He chose neither flight nor to retire.

Acceptance authored his new book,
and he liked the way it read, it felt, and looked.