i want to be loved gently. i want to be loved over a bowl of stew. i'm quieter, these days. i don't know that i ever really wanted a loud life anyway, but - i do get tired of being my own support structure. i get tired of having to paint myself brighter. i like the idea of holding someone else's brush. of letting them be my counterpoint, even if that takes trust. and yes; of course i have friends and family and loved ones.

but every once in a while, i think about how nice it would be to make two cups of coffee. i think about going to our local community theatre production just to support anybody on stage. i think about how i want to pack a cooler with little sandwiches cut into triangles and go on a day trip to somewhere new. to explore with somebody. to share that moment where something-is-new.

oh, my life is beautiful, i know that. but sometimes, in the quiet moments, the echo of what-is-gone comes back to me. i remember again the difference of being alone versus being lonely.

i keep thinking about the number of parrots and mimicking birds that say love you! as part of their vocabulary. how often they must hear that in order to learn it as a song.

when i was a child and learning how to train dogs, we were warned against using puppy too much around the dog - it might get confused and think the word puppy was a name. we were supposed to use mostly command words - keep it simple and clear.

but when my dog is in the middle of a nightmare, i say i love you to him, and he calms down. i say i love you! and he starts wiggling, delighted. when i first rescued him, i love you got no reaction. he understood i love you! before he understood what stairs are. the first thing i ever trained him to understand, maybe, before even his name: i love you.

my sister used to say i love you! and her cat would come running. he knew his name, too, but her voice saying i love you was enough.

there's some debate about how many words our pets understand. maybe they understand the tone more than the actual word. science almost always seems to be coming out with new exciting information about just how much animals can learn and understand language. it often more seems that the only true barrier is that we don't understand them when they answer back.

goblin doesn't know it yet, but for the last 3 days, i've been telling him about the new bed i bought him. i had to save for a while in order to afford it - but it's specifically for big dogs like him, and (supposedly) won't flatten out after 6 months. it was twice as expensive as my own mattress, and i'm way-too-excited to give it to him. i keep reading him the stats - it says it'll help any joint pain! and one more sleep until it comes! he wiggles in joy at the tone in my voice, this thing i know i'm not really communicating, but something he seems to understand-anyway.

as of 7:30 AM today, the new bed is on the way. goblin is asleep on my couch, happily snoring. the truck is two towns over. i keep refreshing the delivery updates.

something about telling these creatures in our lives i love you, even knowing they can't understand exactly. even knowing each word in that phrase holds a concept maybe-outside of real communication's possibilities - to understand "i/you", to understand love, to understand holding love and passing it through you into something else. knowing, really, we've probably trained them with this phrase comes petting. and then saying it, over and over and over through the little lonely hours of our day.

hoping, with repetition and action and practice: we'll find a way to tell them anyway.

i have to believe somewhere, someone is trying a taco for the first time. someone is taking their first shower. someone is coming home to a new puppy.

i have to believe that this winter, someone new to snow will pull out a 5 dollar plastic sled and throw themselves down a hill, just to try it.

i think i'm probably lucky to be familiar with sunrises. i live in an area where the lightning bugs dance in their cocktail hours. i take chickadees for granted.

today i saw a tree that had changed to fall colors, and my first reaction was to grimace. i love autumn, but i hate the cold. i don't want it to be winter yet.

but how lucky, to live in a place where the leaves do change color - so bright and vibrant that people make treks from around the world just to look at what i grew-up-with. my mom's friend was a teacher in florida. she used to ask us to mail her an assortment of leaves, just to show her children - to prove to them yes, they really do turn yellow and orange and red.

last year i finally tried pumpkin spice for the first time. someone this year will find a new favorite knitting pattern. someone's favorite band will drop a new album. artists will make things we haven't yet imagined. there will be chalk drawings and magnet poetry and karaoke and recipes and laughing.

it is easy to forget. this was all new to me, once. and when it was - well, it was just all so easy to love.

“Promise me not to hide yourself when you’re in pain, it’s unfair that we laughed together but you cried alone”

— Unknown

in another world, when you are loved, you grow wings  to show it. the bigger the love, the bigger the wings. 

and a world that sees wings as the ultimate status symbol. celebrities with gigantic wings that cannot fly because they are too heavy. monarchs that have stylists to enlarge their (very stumpy) wings. 

babies born with the soft proof of their parent’s love, babies flaking off feathers when their parents don’t care enough. teenagers who watch their wings flake and grow every day, never sure who loves them or doesn’t. having your crush figure out you like him because his wings won’t stop fluffing up. 

bullies who fake having large wings, who hurt others because they never felt whole, who go home and try to wish their feathers into growing. gentle, soft people who have long wings they’re embarrassed of, who tuck them and try to be average because they don’t like showing off. 

weddings where there’s so much love in the room everyone’s wings swell up. the couple having perfectly matched wings which don’t stop their steady growth. waking up next to your husband of six years to find he’s gone and all your feathers have fallen off.

a girl who is pushed down and laughed at for her little wings, her broken home. who knows she’s ugly for it, who feels perfectly alone. who one day walks into a room with another girl who happens to complement her shirt and within six days has become the closest friend she’s ever learned. her wings spreading big and wide and proud over other people’s heads, her new feathers getting in the way because she’s not used to them, pushing her new feathers out of the way so she can kiss the girl she’s dreamed about.

finding your best friend and watching the feathers sprout. lying awake in bed feeling useless and yet having this proof that someone out there loves you. helping a stranger on the train only to have a few cautious pinfeathers tickle their way out. wondering if they felt that tickle, too.

waking up from a dream very confused, hoping a boy six blocks down doesn’t come into school with suddenly slightly larger wings. ace people with arching wings who are absolutely loved by their friends, who are absolutely loving. your boyfriend promising you that boy he’s flirting with means nothing, finding that your feathers are slowly falling out in the shower each morning. 

having average wings and a sad heart and doing your best to be alive and happy and whole but failing terribly - but working towards it, slowly, until one day you see your wings spreading and get excited about who it could be, who liked you enough to change you this drastically; only to figure out on a tuesday afternoon that it’s you, you’re the one who loves yourself for once; and the thought is so big and wide and lovely that you sit down on the floor and can’t stop crying because despite everything, you made it. and that’s amazing.

oh, i love the way relationships develop their own personal language of love. when all that joy shows the way they love you. i love when it is a little icon to who they are, to how you get along with them.

my sister takes a picture of a dead bug and sends it to me - this is you. my friend asks me how the move is going; she put a reminder in her phone to check up on me. i put a piece of ice down my friend's back, he returns the favor by holding my phone over my head and making me jump to catch it. jason and i scream-sing green day while going all of 15 miles an hour down country roads. molly is who i go to for a quiet night in with 5 dollar wine.

i go out for dinner with them and have to step outside to take a phone call; when i come back they've ordered my favorite appetizer without needing to be asked. andrew and i have a long-standing tradition of him picking me up to spike me directly into the first soft-looking surface around. i don't even need to speak to my best friend - she and i will just look at each other and have an entire conversation. burst out laughing at 3 PM, high and cackling like we're evil witches. i just moved by myself into a new city - my brother keeps introducing me to his friends that now live close to me. he always says - oh yeah, this is sibling and then pretends to ignore me. for days now, my family has been in and out of my apartment, just tinkering with things; making sure i am settling in nicely.

i usually have watermelon instead of cake for my birthday; kim forces a full yankee candle into the rind so i can have something to blow out and wish on. for 20 minutes on a saturday, all us grown adults crawl into one bed to have a cuddle puddle like we're in high school again. every 20 seconds someone starts giggling, and then we're laughing again. nick calls me from california; we both groan about the price of tickets, agonizing. miranda and i meet up in the city for the first time in years - without discussing it beforehand, the minute we lay eyes on each other, we both strike gruesome little gremlin poses instead of waving. dean always goes for the hug. joe always does a single firm handshake. sometimes i think about my friends and get so happy i just start crying.

oh, how wonderful to live in a world where affection is biologically ingrained in us. how wonderful that affection helps us build our single greatest strength - community. how wonderful that affection is our body's way of saying - thing is good, let's keep. how wonderful, this language, this skein we weave! to show the other person - i might not always say it. but i love that you live in me.

Tell me a soft memory

we would find out later i had burned off my entire cornea - about 65% of my eye. my doctor told me it is the organ with the highest concentration of nerve endings - i was in an amount of pain that can't be spoken.

and i was blind. for the first time in my life, i was totally blind. i kept thinking about reading, about writing. weirdly, just once, about driving. we had no idea if i would ever see again. just like that - my entire life was different.

it is a strange place to reference for a soft memory, to begin here.

my siblings were taking excellent care of me, but there was a moment in the hospital where, just through bad luck and timing - both of them had to step away for a moment. i was crying at that point; not emotionally. for 3 days after this i would still be crying, my tears, like a mermaid's, a frothy pink with blood.

my brother worried about leaving me. he had another, just-as-bad emergency.

"i got her," someone said. "don't worry."

a soft hand held mine, and then she started talking.

her name was jess. she has a wife named clyde. they live a few blocks up the street. clyde fell down, but the x-rays seem to be coming back better than expected. jess says she's got long dark hair and "more wrinkles than an elephant". jess describes every chair in the room and every person. she talks about her two kids and her cats and her favorite memories from college.

a doctor came. i had to switch to a different waiting room. i tried to stand up to follow the voice - i found jess's hand, following me. she didn't let go. she kept talking the whole way: lamp to your left, just a few more steps, okay to your right is the ugliest painting, good, now a little more walking straight, you got it baby

in the new silence of the next room she sat me down and called my brother for me, telling him where we'd gone to. and she stayed there for a bit, just chatting, her voice echoing in the eerie quiet. gently describing the room to me. and then someone was rude. from the sound of the voice, a kid, i think.

"why is she crying?"

"she just lost her vision," jess said. "she can't see."

"oh." said the kid. "that's scary."

the kid tells me he is here because he has peas stuck up his nose. that makes me laugh, his mom (?) groans. she tells me about the kid (he's 6, he likes paw patrol and eating cheese), about herself, about moving from cali.

jess says she's sorry, but she has to leave now, she's gotta go check on her wife.

"don't worry," says the mom. "i got her." and then i felt her hand press into mine.

for hours like that: i am taken care of by strangers. each person just talking with whatever comes to their head - not for any reward or celebrity or real reason, i guess. just because i am scared and alone and in the hospital and blinded and need to be distracted. not everyone even got told the story - they would just pick up in the silence with - oh by the way the television is playing HGTV - do you like that kind of a thing? yeah, me too, but could never quite get into those open-floor plans, i'll tell you -

by the time my brother is able to come back, the room is buzzing. we talk to each other like old friends, laughing, cracking jokes about if you don't like hospital food wait until you get on an airplane and can't believe i'm up past two in the morning what a party animal i'm becoming. i am holding the hands of someone named drew, who likes my crow tattoo and making crochet snails.

there are many dark moments full of pain in this world. this - in the low of absolute-dark, absolute-pain: people find a way to paint in it anyway. the color splash of their voices: this triumphant, radiating kindness of - let's be here together, let me help you, let's keep going.

i never saw their faces. i can't remember many of their names. but i think about them often, and the way we all took a deep breath - and did something gentle amongst the pain.

today is the first day of june. the woods were empty except for my dog and me and i let him run off-lead. while i turned my back to change my music, i looked up and - out of character for him, he was gone.

i called his name until my throat hurt. i knew i would keep calling him until i spat blood if it meant he'd show up. but he called back, eventually. a single, long whine. he had gotten his paw stuck under a branch. we both cried while i freed him, my arms wrapped around his frame. he was uninjured, just stuck. he was fine moments afterwards; bounding along happily.

later i texted my mom a picture of my eggs-and-toast. i told her about how at the end of the walk, we saw an older couple having a breakfast picnic. they had a blue cooler and matching clothes and held hands with each other over paper plates. i wanted to tell her something bigger, something without a name. about the loneliness.

i wanted to, but i didn't.

my dog is asleep in the other room. i can hear him snoring. i keep thinking about that moment of panic. about finding him tumbled to the ground, unmoving. i keep thinking about how scary it was for him too, trapped and unable to pronounce my name -

not being able to say mom, i'm here, and i'm trying to get home, but nature has gotten in the way.

AMELIA EVE AND VICTORIA PEDRETTI

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