Green

I have so much left to say. I finally picked up that book about colors, the one I’ve been eye-ing for the last year. The one where it talks about dreaming and breathing in shades of green, where I found out that in Islam, “paradise” and “garden” are almost synonymous. I fell asleep in the forest that night thinking about life after death instead of the actual act of dying. You were there with me, and I wasn’t afraid.

I wish you understood what you sparked in me. You gave me a beginning, a glimpse into the world when my life was just starting. There are pieces of you in every season, markers of the times our lives once ran parallel, then slowing into a lull. Months where you doubled down on your suffering in the name of God, years where you could never sit still. I watched you until we held the same share in the same struggle. Your screaming, your laughing, your silence- we were both waiting for signs of the end to come. In darkness, in winter, contrasts. It never did.

What’s left for us now? I never got to tell you about all the rainstorms followed by sunsets that rivaled the best day of my life. The currents charging, the way my life rushed forward like the Delaware you welcomed New Year’s Day in. I would have pulled you out if I could, trade that in for all of the ways I bleed you into my life now. The poppies on my ankle for you. The scar on my hand that I never let fade. A language I won’t let die. 

The world is so vastly open without you, and sometimes it terrifies me.

When you dive into that green, I just hope you don’t go for good.