If I was with you

If I was with you...

I'd race up the hill, throw myself on the ground, and roll with abandon to the bottom, grass in my hair, the cool day staining my cheeks red.

Smiling crookedly up at you, I'd pull you down beside me, both of us laughing and amazed that such childlike play came naturally.

If I was with you, I'd let you pay me the most brazen compliments, half-skeptical and half-charmed, both of us knowing that it was a delightful game.

We both know how to play at serious.

If we were together, I'd kiss you with a passion that would burn all of my years of self-denial and care and prudence to smoldering ash.

If we were in the same place, be it mountaintop trail with the fragrant pines overhead, or running along the sea, where the sand hills rise and fall in the late fall breeze, I'd slam the door on tomorrow.

We both know that tomorrow arrives whether we want it to or not.

If we were to meet in that place where dreams and hopes collide, I would open myself to you and the moment, listening to the part of my spirit that has been so frequently subdued and ignored.

I would be the woman you see in me.

You would be freed from the invisible burdens you carry.

But it is only sometimes that I allow myself to dream -- and wonder how to channel that passion in the here and now, the flame that burns so far away, the dream that lies out of reach of my open hands.

To push the door ajar, even for those moments, is an act of determination I have not allowed myself until now...the luxury of imagination that defies rational thought -- and soars and cavorts and rises, illumined for a moment, against a night sky.