my own spring

I want you to imagine your heart as if it were a field.  On any given day that field is just a sort of green grass.  Maybe some of you are picturing some trees, maybe some bushes.  For all I know you could toss in a small lake or even a river running through it.  But please at least picture a field.

In 2011 someone lit a fire in my field.  Like a spark riding the wind, it spread wildly through me and left hardly anything alive in its wake.  Charred earth, whispers of life, but really not much else.  A sky dotted with dark clouds and more often than not a bit of thunder and lighting just to remind me of what had happened.

In 2012 the sky over my field started to clear up a little.  The dark clouds gradually lightened and moved away and, after a few good rains, the charred ground that had once been so ugly started to dissolve and show the naked earth.  For a time it stayed bare.  As the year wore on, grass started to grow again.  Vivid and green it was quickly unkempt and unruly in its nature.  Bending with the wind instead of beneath it and always, continuously, showing it knew it how to stand back up on its own.

In the beginning of 2013 something different happened.  A figure appeared in my field but he wasn't really much of anything more than shadow.  He gradually walked around, setting some sort of objects amidst the grass and occasionally acknowledging the flowers that had so noticeably started dimpling the ground.  I didn't know what the objects were that he was setting down but it didn't really matter at the time.  I liked not asking the hard-hitting questions of him, letting the months go by slowly and surely instead.  Gradually he began to take more of a shape before me.  The green of his eyes made the ground seem to thump and the genuine smile on his lips caused the stars to shine in a brilliant night sky that seemed to fall so suddenly.

It wasn't until tonight that I realized what he was setting down.  In the midst of the grassy field resembling my heart, warm and comfortable with a slight haze rolling above what felt like a meadow of contentment, he quickly struck his hands together.

There was a spark.

For a brief moment I thought that maybe it was happening again.  For a brief instant I thought I had made a mistake, wandering so willingly into something that was going to hurt me again.  That maybe my field was going to get torched and that I would retreat once more to hiding, never willing to return.

But no.

The spark hit the objects he had placed and in a glorious display of light and sound, fireworks jumped into that starry sky.  Exploding in a world of color and energy so brilliant that all sight and sound seemed to melt together.  Fireworks I've been waiting so long for... that I took into my hand and somehow absorbed back into myself.

And then we kissed.