do you remember meeting me there?

look back on pages that read more like five stages than poetry. a beautiful reminder of a life worth living and
growing. i had a dream that we met under the most magical of circumstances. i was hiking down a trail covered in
bushes of blackberries on the columbia river, a place i often visited growing up. as the thickets cleared i could hear
the roar of summer run off and came to a flat rock that plunged down some sixty feet into a pool formed by three walls in front of a waterfall. i saw you, long hair swirling in the wind you looked up and giggled because my lips were stained with blackberries. i was speechless struck dumb seeing a saint, a sinner, a siren and a muse radiating from a body i wanted to know. time stood still as you beckoned with the smallest of gestures, stood up and lept. i heard the splash but couldnt follow, as my legs were weary from the journey that brought me to you and me.

what felt like moments later i too lept and felt the wind in my hair and my stomach in my chest. as i hit the water and sunk from the warm shallows to the deep beneath,i broke the surface in time to see you scrambling back up the rock to the ledge where we first met. you made it all look so easy. i made my way to the rocks and started the climb. i was tired and shivering and my fingers were slippery and i tried with blood starved limbs to catch you but you dissapeared over the top and from my perspective you were too far away. gone.

halfway up and hugging worn handholds my mind started questioning why i couldnt jump when you did...perhaps the timing was wrong or somwhere deep inside i was just scared. i felt the push of my legs and the pull of gravity and time forever grinding forward and timing laughing at me knowing it owed me one from the times before.

a three minute climb seemed to take three months and as i pulled myself over the crux back to the ledge where we had met you were still there...waiting in the sun, with beauty eminating from seagreenblue eyes. you had been there the whole time, i just couldnt see you from thirty below my face buried in stone. i sat down next to you and you giggled sending shivers through my wet, but sunwarmed body. no words were spoken but a thousand things were said as we sat together in the sun. whats next? we seemed to be saying in feelings neither of could muster up in words. will we be content drying off in the sun until i am strong enough to climb the path back to the life i knew before you? you just kept smiling as you grabbed my hand and inched closer and closer to the edge...