Eleven Skies

Its starting to sink in. I can relax into being loved. I can let go of my fear, my apprehension, my jealously. I can accept that I deserve this. I deserve to feel this good. I can trust myself: I won’t blow this because I think that I don’t merit feeling so adored. And I can get comfortable with vulnerability and uncertainty -- it will always remain -- and simply accept that these questions enhance, rather than detract, from the experience of loving, and being loved.

This week it's been a story told under eleven skies.

First Sky: Victoria, the mottled cloud cover, dappled autumn leaves, rain. Under this sky I walk up the ramp and board a flight to Alberta. Its only been a week since my lover left, but it feels like a month; a year.

Second Sky: Above the clouds, the Rockies hidden below, glimpses of familiar ridge lines I’ve walked in a previous life time. Poetry. Longing.

Third Sky: Calgary, my lover greets me at the airport. Time is suspended in her eyes when I see her. I can’t say a word, but only kiss her face, her eyes, her mouth. We embarrass people in the parking lot.

Fourth Sky: the Bow Valley. It was home for fourteen years, so familiar, but so strange. The last time I was here was one of the most painful days of my life. Now, its just mountains and forests; at once so familiar and yet so foreign. And its where my lover lives, so its also paradise.

Fifth Sky: Day Two. Breakfast in Banff at three in the afternoon.

Sixth Sky: driving up the darkening valley we let fear and jealously and guilt creep into our hearts. Darkness falls early. Hell, we just ate breakfast! But the days are so short. Its so easy almost all of the time, but when its not, its really frightening. I fear the fear. I don’t want to feel this after so many months of vulnerability. But with the open heart comes tiny wounds, healed swiftly by loving hands.

Seventh Sky: We practice retail therapy in Lake Louise. Visit friends. Drive back down valley in the darkness. I forgot about snow squalls.

Eighth Sky: Harvie Heights, where I lived for six years: we delight in the carved stone of Fairholme Canyon, its polished walls pocked with fossils, its bends and plunge pools and narrow slit of sky like the embrace of an old friend. New love, my last love, here now in my arms.

Ninth Sky: Too swiftly our last evening comes, and under a fat moon we curl into one another. I don’t want to leave. I just found you! I just found you, I want to cry. That very morning I burst into tears at the joy of this discovery. The following morning the sun rises over the tentacles of the city as we drive towards the airport. Its like time stands still when we are in each other’s company. Its so damned easy.

Tenth Sky: The moment I step through security I want to turn around and run back. I feel the lump in my throat and the ache that starts in my heart and seeks a place to end. Then Vancouver, where I work with a client, and then….

Eleventh Sky: Victoria. Under a powder blue sky I fly home and await the arrival of Rio and Silas. How I wished that I was walking through the door to the sound of ice cubes chiming their happy song in a glass, and her arms thrown around me. Love, bottomless.

We go to bed early, and by 8:30 I am drifting in and out of sleep, moving between Silas’ and Rio’s beds. Rio asks me to massage has back, and gives detailed instructions on what he likes: “Now make your fingers tickle me,” he asks. I feel his body slacken as sleep settles over him. I smile at him and point to the ceiling, the meaning understood between the boy and the man: I love you as big as the sky. Then he says, his eyes closed, “I love you as big as eleven skies,” and I close my eyes too, imagining the vastness of such a love.