The Moment of Almost

The only thing worse than knowing, is almost knowing.  Feeling every whir and click and whistle as your brain weighs out the data before you.  Replaying every relevant moment and filtering out the excuses you provided or accepted and the rose coloring your heart cast over the facts.  Knowing that any second the unrefutable truth will blaze into existence, exposing every dark corner that Fear and Doubt may call their home and revealing the twine that Hope has used to hold things together when they should have fallen apart.  Knowing that, once bathed in the harsh light of truth, your world is robbed of its limitless possibilities and you will be forced to see it for what it was.  Either a sturdy structure built on a stable foundation or a lean too placed against a wall of inflexible granite.  The moment if almost knowing if your heart is breaking or overflowing.  The moment of almost knowing if you were in love with one another or if you were just in love.  The moment of almost knowing if your future is full of anniversaries, inside jokes, and comfortable silences or if it will be littered with awkward first dates, terrible first kisses, and nervous talking.  The moment of almost knowing if forever was as long as you thought it was.  That moment of almost knowing that almost was never going to be enough.

Love Ain't What It Used To Be

I wish love had headed the warnings of her mother and stopped making that grotesque face.  She was told time and time again that she better stop or her face would stick like that, and that is just what it has done.  The words "I love you", I have to believe, once were as pure and warm and blanketing as I see them.  Not the way most see her and her friends now.  As keys to fear, mistrustfulness, admittance to complacency, and ultimately pain.  I will never see her that way.  Love will forever be wide-eyed, beautiful, young, and brave in my eyes and rather than a weapon it will forever be a shield and a gift.  "I love you" will always be a safe place of absolute truth for me...and that is something that makes me forever grateful.