Reflections on Friends by Weedle Montre (Caviness)

The trees reflect in the flashing chrome strip outside my window. The clouds are there too, but they're gray layers today, and they don't hold my attention like the red and brown trees do. The car is big and heavy all around me and as I travel in it, I feel safe, protected. Like a child, I'm still fascinated by the windows buttons, the little square lights in the dash above the radio, the window wipers with all the different speeds. But mostly I'm fascinated at how you seem to be here in the car, too. I'm not inclined to wonder why I feel you here; I am blessed with the tendency to accept this sort of phenomenon at face value.

I pull into the driveway and park in your spot and purposefully turn off the radio, one of those odd, old-fashioned things you always do. Favorite days of my life are still spent here in this house, and I am often alone and content, but with the promise of your homecoming carried in my heart. And in the midst of baking bread, hanging up laundry, sweeping floors, I feel you move next to me, funny and quiet and strong. You walk in the door at night, your coat over your arm, your blue eyes shining, eager, and a bit amused. My soul knows you and greets you and holds you before our hands and arms and lips ever touch.

I wear pink and black this afternoon-pink because I like it next to my face, black because it's how I feel: dark, still, total. No stars glitter among the night-color folds of my skirt; it is flat, soft and comforting in its simplicity. The colors of me today contrast so much with the colors of the day-green-brown grass, pale gray skies, yellow and red trees. Fall is here, and the earth is sleepy, drowsing in the cloudlight, warm and alive beneath the leaves. I am like this on a day alone-immersed in fuzzy, blurred solitude, yet sharply awake to some half-hidden sense of my soul's voice.

Now this day this voice speaks quietly and clearly to me of you, dear fellow-bumpy gray sweater, patient clever hands, steady eyes full of wit and blue depth, and a shining soul that welcomes and pulls me in close and safe. I have thought for some long time about friends, what it really means to have one, how to keep one. It seems to me the most cherished offering I can make to a friend is to welcome him completely into my reality, truly believing that he is as real as I am, that when he looks out at the day, he sees what I see, and knows that I look at all of life with him/ in/ me. So in the day and in the night, you are with me close-kind, accepting, loving. And I go out into the world fearless, light, young, healed and whole.

From Well, Well, Well (transcribed by Laurie Ward)