Con[grad]ulations, Class of Eternity

At some point this weekend, I'm sure God paused, looked around, and giggled at the things He'd done.

Graduation:
Black-robed and tired, I trudged my way into the sea of comrades, trying to shove my too-small hat on my mis-measured head while anxiously flopping the awkward tassel out of my nose. I watched as names filtered across the stage and as memories ghosted along in their wake. When I took the folder and made my way to the "Other Side," the thoughts of, "Well, I've already been here since December" slipped away and were replaced by an awkwardly tied-down flag where I posed, "Cheese"-d and became another in a long line of the

American Dream.

College bookmarks life: serves as a stopping point between the "growing up" and the "adult." I spent three and a half years dwindling away these bookmarked years, consuming the idle pages as I scribbled away in the margins of my Book. When I finally stepped out, the years previous were nearly illegible and the supposed "blank pages" reserved for the years to come had been bled through and smeared to the point that I needed to shelve that text and replace it with a fresh, clean slate.

Since January, the newly white pages have become familiar friends and my Life has smoothed the scars into gentle wrinkles that vaguely remember that Face that crossed the stage with Its smile in the air, or her laughter that hearkened back to late-night Study Hours, or that handshake from that Professor whose gentle eyebrows seemed to forget the missing essays.

In black funeral attire, I descended the stage and stood beside the rest of the graduating class of 2009 and felt a Stranger at Home.

The In-between:
A flower. A table on the beach. Two candles and years' worth of burdened memories, flickering soft as the flame that wove in the wind as I tasted the salt spray across my lips and my feet dug beneath beach rocks to earth.

And a flower. The petals hushing against one another in the "Remember when?"

Remember when you thought you'd Keep and Preserve and Leave the life you'd dreamed to forge another, unpredicted one?

The flower shifts, the stem rolls a little on the uneven tabletop and a hand takes mine
and pledges
Love
beyond the Flower,
in Spite of the Flower,
because of

the Flower on the table at the beach
like the prayer that wafts skyward on the shoulders of
candle-smoke.

----

This world changes faster than I can catch my breath and I
intentionally
extend the exhale.