Round

As we walked west towards the mountains, he asked questions. Questions I have answers to. But, in the moment of the day, when the sun was sinking below the wintry skyline, I didn't feel like answering. Fully. Wholly. I gave flat answers, like a flat character in the plot that is The Story of my Life, and what I hope to be The Story of my Life. Really, I want my life to be full of round characters. People who go places and experience things that help them discover. People who add layers to who they are, to who I am, like rolling stones gathering moss, gaining circumference as their gyre widens. Characters the reader connects with. Characters whose oddities and inclinations jump off the page and become dear to the reader. So much so that when the reader turns over the last page and closes the cover, they feel that something in them has died. That they have parted with a best friend. Not only a friend full of self-discovery, but that the reader discovers themselves within the discoveries. I wish I would have said that.

I wish I would have told him I don't just want to help people, but I want to change them and be changed by them. I want to be the only member of the church within many miles and have the opportunity to teach the gospel to people who have never heard it. I don't want them to hear that I believe it. I want them to know.

I wish I would have told him I want a best friend to spend days like this with. To go here and here with. To live in a Big City with and make it our own. To bundle up and walk along the streets with on the evening of the first snowfall. To come home to and cook dinner with in a tiny kitchen we can barely afford. We'd take visitors to our favorite side streets in town, show them the best art museums and favorite eats, and then kiss them goodbye until we come home for a short summer stay. I want to know what it feels like to be lonely in a place where you only have each other. To know what it means to sing, "I'll Be Home For Christmas" and feel the warmth that comes from excited voices heard when walking in the back door.

I wish I would have said all sorts of things. That I would have talked his ear off, because I know he would have listened. You're quiet tonight, Martha, he said. I put my hands in my pockets. I know. When the last of the purple skyline folded into the mountains to fall asleep, silence set in. As the two of us walked in tandem, along some un known longitude and latitude on this round earth with round places and people and life to experience, all I could hear was the sound of our feet, walking towards the future.

{images via flickr}