Читать книгу an inkstorm summoned under live oak we dreamed - daniel boonelight - Страница 2

Everybody's story starts the same. We are all womb dwellers. We are all violently pushed into this world by our mother's love. We all catch our first breath and let it all out, crying. We cry for mercy or relief in any form, and what comes next is our first taste of comfort. We all spend the rest of our lives craving comfort.

Comfort comes in many forms and for me, in the most exaggerated art form, words. Words are a thrill seek because they cannot be trusted. Words are dangerous because they expire. Words will never live up to their promises and yet, their movement in the shadows leaves everyone entranced and nobody safe from their seductive siren songs.

Words are strung together in tales by humans who are brave enough to explore the landscape of their inner world, a feeble attempt to reveal a trodden path to their fellow travelers. Words are a map to nowhere and everywhere all at once, a key to a locket around a heart that you know beats in rhythm and waiting but only death will open the door to the chest holding its secrets.

Words come to us in so many forms. Musings, poetry, scripture, confessions, anger spun in fiery webs of confusion and lies, love letters, songs, postcards, snail mail, words of affirmation, words that bend and bleed under knotted fists full of lead, words that work their way to the core of our being like a worm drunk on its first rotten apple of the fall.

Words have the power to wake us up or put us to sleep. I am the fortunate daughter of a man who believed in the power of bedtime stories. I fell asleep almost every night to his familiar voice and gentle hands turning the pages of a book that was simultaneously turning the pages of my heart. He was the comfort that I craved through my whole childhood.

Words are a life saving raft that drift me towards the ones who pay their attention and nearly drown themselves in sacrifice to find the deepest cavern within. We collide in the light and I reach for the writers. I pull them to the surface of themselves, I pull them close and let them climb on in and rest. I devour their life's work and just as they repose, they restore me in the glory of appreciation, the joy of being found, and the comfort of being known. Writers need readers. Readers need writers. We all need a witness.

I don't remember the exact day that Daniel planted himself inside of my world with all of his words and whimsy, but I do remember the fear surrounding the day he told me he was moving far away. Words were of no comfort then; they only served to salt the wounds, and augment the echo of Frost shouting throughout my life, "Nothing gold can stay."

Daniel packed my attic with assurances of his return, he strung silver around my neck and swore it would never tarnish, he surrounded me with a hedge of friendships in common, reasons to return, and still I carried on in my unbelief. I built my walls, I dug my moats, I spat my silence in the direction of every falling star.

And then,

Time, like a lazy river, founds its way back towards the sea.

The sea where we first met, that sandbar in the middle of nowhere, the magical place where words bridge hearts and lives and awaken us to the very real truth that we exist in this space and time together and we matter.

Daniel is a wordsmith, a song-writer, a poet, a master craftsman, a whittler of hearts and many moons ago, he made me a believer in everlasting philia love.

-Tara Endicott

Media, Pennsylvania

5-29-2017