AN OLD FRONTIER OF THE HEART

WHO AM I?

     It was long before she worried about the woman parts of her body; and long before I was stung and embarrassed when my father said “grow up”. Some worried we spent so much time together walking away from the subdivision. But, it was long before what even we might call Love was lost. We were kids. We were explorers. And the world was all long trail, outward, and away from where we always played alone. You were shy. So was I. We didn’t touch but lived in a spiral, in a place where we were intimate. We had secret code-words, and pet names, and curiosity unexplored. We held hands, not much; not because it symbolized anything, but because we were new and filling our hearts with one another. This was the first time. And the time which never returned.

WHY AM I HERE?

     When you look back down that trail and see those two, me and you, who were so innocent, it seems impossible that you were ever so small and fresh. Impossible that I was so open. That we experienced a world together before the world as we know it now slowly became guarded behind expectations of others.

     Can we scrub away the layers of the years and make ourselves expectant to be discovered? Can a heart become a virgin frontier? Can first love ever be found once the first love has gone its separate way? Can we become untouched? Can there be an old frontier of the heart? A once and never tenderness longing to be explored?

WHAT DO I WANT?

     I found this old memory in my heart. A joy not used up. You and a photo and old longings set aside. Strolls down paths which no longer exist and could not be found. That lead…? Our lives have made the frontier between us like Briar Rose’s hedge: dense, complex, thorny.

Anyway. What do I want, really? I don’t want to interrupt your life. I don’t desire to bring pain. I just want to know if you would smile that long time ago innocent smile if you saw me. The one you smiled when my squeaky old bike came up the hill and you heard it, turned and waved.

© Copyright 2015, Jean W. Yeager

All Rights Reserved

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