Adventure

She and I walk, two strangers in a foreign land. Our steps shrink against pavement, sink in long grass. Milky clouds gather in the distance, preparing their incoming appearance. We wind our way through parks and neighborhoods, passing under bridges by the sweep of river’s flow. This life is hard, we echo to each other, spilling the secret of transition into the air as we pass through. No one can quite prepare you for the upheaval you experience in your planned, pretty life.

Wind tussles our hair as we toss questions around—how can we hold our grip so tightly on the past when each day we rise, rejecting the present? What does it take to break our inner layers apart to piece them back together?

We put miles in the distance as darkness grows the sky. A few errant drops fall on our faces, testing out their landing space. Tennis shoes bounding up the incline. Fears and discovery fragrant on our breath.

All the unmistakable—how can you call something adventure when you weren’t looking at life in that realm? And the things we ponder—where do you get past the point of yourself and surrender to what comes out of your control? We grieve what once was and lift our hearts to what may yet come.

Lightning streaks, cracking open the clouds. Steady pulse of rain catches us in open space. Still we walk, soaked and speaking aloud new revelations. Trees canopied above sprout electric leaves against the gray. Thunder roars, sneaking closer, and as we turn around to face the natural show its power, I breathe the wetness, stare deeper into the wood of brown and green, note another human next to me while bearing this world together. The circle of new beginnings, of friendships and fresh chances, of walking through a storm and feeling how there has to be more that blows this way. How in a stream sheet of rain while we keep talking, here, unexpected, a simple adventure unfolds where once our souls fell shapeless.