One-sided solace

Sometimes you look at the green on the other side of the fence. You sigh as you take inventory, decide maybe it is better where you are but it sure looks good over there. Maybe you have someone you're running out of patience with, or maybe you're just hanging onto the safety that is found in familiar. Maybe it's your lover, or your nephew. Who knows, maybe you're just tired.

Doesn't matter. Sometimes your father is gone, your mother fading. Sometimes someone steps on your toes, or follows you too close. Sometimes your own shadow makes you itch. Sometimes the IRS sends you a demand notice. Sometimes you push the law to your favor. Or maybe you have a family member in a car wreck. And you sit and wait for news, any news.

Sometimes a friend reaches out. Sometimes a friend freaks out.

Sometimes you're the one that's the nuisance.

Sometimes it's a little less, a little more. Than what you want. Sometimes you get the right message at the wrong moment. Sometimes you should just sit on your hands and be patient, maybe keep your mouth shut. Sometimes it's too much.

Sometimes it is enough, the right message and the right moment, who you are, where you are. But knowing you, you'll want something different.

Sometimes your life, it splashes, swirls, seeps, soaks, drips, and rolls in waves that you try to catch and hold onto without getting wet.

Sometimes you sit in a room and discuss your mother, your father, the details of your parents' lives, the estate, the house, the furniture, taxes, trusts, percentages, divisions, accounts and trustees. The details are necessary and business-like, but by nature emotional. You look up at the bookshelf across the room and focus on a tiny book, four gold letters up the spine, the word, Trees. You stare at that word until the letters break from the binding and branch outwards, reaching past the other books, rapidly growing and stretching gold across the other titles, and roots too become visible, stretching down the shelves. All golden. You glance around you while the word Tree turns into a tree and grows across the bookshelf and walls. Does anyone else notice this golden tree growing in the living room? You don't dare ask that out loud.

You might think this vision is a sign. Trees, nature, your father, your mother, golden, the roots, the growth. This is life and it's okay. Or maybe it's a coincidence, your eyes locking on that particular book, your mind playing with the word. You cannot make up your mind but you know what you believe.

Sometimes you're nothing more than a dreamer, twisting this world to meld into your perfectly figured shapes of meaning and comprehension.