.

I once loved a man

over twice my age who would look into my eyes and say he saw everything he needed. He called me a Woman, a Queen, an old soul with the grace of a thousand setting suns and a thousand scarlet rises across his burgundy brown maroon hillsides, as rocky and rigid as his temper. I danced through this time in my life learning more about myself through him than I ever had. He admired me adored me cared so immensely for me but most of all he listened to me. Hung on every word drank it in like it was truly something satiating, thirst-quenching. Amid the emptiest landscape I had ever traversed my inner well filled then overflowed, as we sat fire-side each evening and I taught him patience understanding perspective the ability to love and then release. He cried yelled pushed me away only to yank me back perhaps too many times, but I let him. I knew that beneath his processes was a generous heart that had endured confusing and harsh realities experiences I would have never made it through. I held that in consideration on nights when he’d wake me up laying in his bed smoking Marlboro reds looking out at the moon, furious, asking me why I was here with him in this tiny desert town. On those nights I would tread so carefully learning the expansiveness of the grace he had awoken in me.

This Teddy, more bear than cuddle-thing, more man than any being I had known, this exuberant artist offering up all he could to whomever was in need. From him I learned the value of listening to another’s story, how inspiration sometimes hides in the dreariest corners, and how too much of anything will ruin it.