We couldn't remember what the word was. It was love, or hope, or light.
I was sitting at the table of my friend, a woman I don't see enough. I don't see any of my friends enough, and we were talking of love and Lennon, how Lennon fell in love with Yoko, or what convinced him that he could love her. It was her story, my friend, and she was telling it.
How do you feel about the light? I was asked. I was stopped cold. Which is a good thing.
I treat darkness like a closet. I reach in and pick a skirt. It's not a walk-in. I once read over the shoulder of a woman on the bus, a magazine article. Sidebar: signs. And then I thought, oh.
I don't believe in coincidence.
I was searching for a song to play when I drove by--I had to drive by; it was the only road to my good friend's house--and it played itself. Don't look back, just keep on walking. And when I got to the house: Come on, come on. And I got to the house the same time as the train, which shook the house and me.
It feels open, the light, open to me. It feels like there's room, room for me and my pj's, pink cotton with black lace, and my love of antique children's books and fairy tales and board games and bad French and freckles and Little League and mary janes and ladybugs and willow trees and tulips, tulips, yellow yellow.
Every now and then I'll have to reach in and get leather, something in a skirt, but I don't live there, in the closet. I live in the air.
I remember staying at a B&B in rural Virginia. It was early evening in summer, after dinner, and there was nothing, absolutely nothing to do. So we wandered, found a Little League game and sat in. It was one of the happiest nights of my life, and it wasn't the lovely haze, or the sky, or my age, or the man I was with, it was all the people, strangers, who said hey.
So. In the middle of the exhibit was a tiny tiny piece of paper suspended on wires from the ceiling, and hung in front of it was a magnifying glass, and you had to climb on the ladder and squint through the magnifying glass and read the single word written on the tiny piece of paper. John Lennon did this, and climbed down the ladder, and smiled, and knew he could love her. The word was love, or hope, or light.
It was light. I know it was. Or if it wasn't, it will be.
