For Linden

if you've ever tried to lace fingers with the rain,

to unwind a riptide,

to count the echoes in a team of canyoned voices,

 then maybe the fatigue and distress of helplessness has carved a line in your brow, smeared your countenance concave down, like mine. 

for in this life, I've pounded in my steps, let them seep into others lives like melted concrete,

molded again. 

windswept by vicarious experience, hearing others words like they always pertain to me. 

some call it sympathy , some call it carelessness.

i call it love, i call it living. 

but, when the days of another are cut unexpectedly short 

suddenly, heart-wrenchingly gone 

like water swallowing an anchor,,, where does my heart lie? 

in words no longer spoken but left up to me to be remembered.

 

this ache, this persistent longing to give up, to fall onto the foundation i've welded myself to 

is my opportunity, my challenge. 

i will rise, not fall. 

she is gone, but her words stay, welded with me in this life.

i will draw her example in color, 

i will live affected, affecting others. 

Contagious was your love, and it won't die, because i heard you.