It’s over—but I don’t think our love will end.

It’s not exactly written like that, is it?

Our love will run like tears from watercolors and create a new something. Its net will cast wider—deeper into the sea. Back, back, back…to the creations with no legs.

Back to water. To swimming. To feeling. Back 11 centuries when it was all different…simpler.

And, in our breath, spaciousness will leak from our parted lips and our last kiss—the distinct, awkward tenderness of our limbs during the slow-elapsing moments that seep in our last embrace.

Heartbreak?

Heartbreak is only doing what doesn’t work—heartbreak is all the subtle ways we lie to ourselves and stay small and in pain.

Love is doing what feels right and true and deeply honoring to even the most frightened parts of ourselves.

And so, we move from murky, merged co-dependence to the crisp clarity of independence.

Back, back, back.

We go back…and there is ocean in our lungs, but we don’t drown. No, we’re done drowning in ourselves—in each other.

Waves crash and froth at our feet. Renewal crests, fresh, clear water cleanses our raw, red, stinging skin.

We swim. We rise. We shake. We dance.

Our tears trickle into the deep blue of the sea and serve only to make it sweeter.

And, we are the same water. We came from the same place. We are beads on the same necklace.

I love you.

I am not ashamed of that.

I can’t stop loving you. I’ve tried and failed.

I must try a new tactic.

Because we can love—and let go at the same time.

I think that’s how we have to do it.

Hate damages our hearts. But freedom—freedom is the fresh gale of salty wind that takes us…

Back

Inside

Again.

Holy. It’s peaceful and sanctified. Full of integrity. Spacious, but not empty. Spontaneous. Solid. Uncertain, but not terrified. There is grief, but no drowning. It’s the ultimate uncovering of trust in ourselves, in the fragile whole of life itself. It’s the dew that glistens on the grass of fresh possibilities.

Back, back, back…

To the truths that glitter in our own hearts.

To health—to the fiery sparks of our purpose.

May we stay and bask here for an eternity.

In this subtle clam shell of being born again, where the softness is so breathtaking and damn near unbearable at the same time.

This fragile space of love and loss—it’s where the garden remembers it’s a garden.

It’s where the first tulip rises her red face in spring and sings to the sun.

It’s where we begin to hear the whispers of the galaxy we are in.

It’s where the whispers become not whispers anymore, but screams and deliciously unrelenting roars.

It’s here.

With water, we separate…and I find myself again.

I find boundaries and clarity.

I love you—and that’s okay.

The love can stay. That was the good part.

But, we can’t be together. That was the bad part—the painful and horribly confusing part.

And, that’s okay.

Back, back, back—to the tender beginning when I first met you.

Back even before that.

Back dipped into time…

Into me—and into the hot blood of the sun.

And words—so many words.

And painting,

And stars,

And life…

There is so much for me to plant in my garden.

There are so many ways I’m beginning to bloom.

Infinite petal rays shoot out from every inch of my skin.

I’m so ready to burst out of the thick mud of this sorrow that I have draped around me because I am scared to be without you. But, there is fire.

Fire is there too.

And so, the end becomes not the death of me…but my most brilliant blooming yet.

Because I will make it so.

~

Relephant:

I Don’t Know how to Fix Us, but I Can’t Let Go.

~

Author: Sarah Harvey
Image: Unsplash/Larm Rmah
Editor: Yoli Ramazzina
Copy editor: Travis May