Birthday Stream of Consciousness

When it’s 5:00 a.m. and the upper story in the old house groans a little bit, foot on flooring, I smile in my sleep because I know I am amongst friends and family.

When coffee smells like three-quarters of a cup, that is enough, because I just happen to have milk in the car and when shared with friends, a little becomes a lot.
Like Jesus, I think five loaves and two small fish are enough for my world when served with prayer and a smile, well, maybe a little hot sauce too, ‘cause you know we have to represent the Latin side.

Leftover milkshakes are a warm reminder of how last night slipped under a blanket and turned into today. These cool mornings have sleepy eyes but I like it so much better when the fog is on the outside and not in my mind.

I love that you can flip furniture, cabinets, turn a house upside down and inside out and still have it feel like home, because home is where the animals are, curled up and stretched out on every chair you want to sit on.

Sometimes anxiety can turn to butterflies when a message arrives that I don’t want to delete but save for a rainy day like exponentially having 100% of your attention, digital.

And, I’ve said it once before in words that you haven’t heard because I spoke them on a different floor of my consciousness, that last stop on the elevator that requires a special set of fingerprints to open my emotions. But today, here’s the view from the top of the building. A snapshot, one that self-destructs with time and the infidelity of memory.

Our hearts don’t beat alone, exempt from the source that gave us life. So either I’m an echo and a memory or there is some umbilical cord that connects hearts of mothers and daughters, a cord that doctors and death itself can’t cut.

And, if I could, I’d wind that cord around my finger and listen for a dial tone and wait for your voice. The best thing about being half of you is not my eyes, but that we could read each others’ minds, and that sometimes when I talk I sound just like you.

Now the coffee is getting cold and the morning is getting brighter, a reminder, that success never sleeps and time sprints through the night. Heartbeats are just reverberations of the funeral drum so I hold my head high because my life is worth dying for.

So you can follow in my footprints, blaze the trail ahead, or walk beside me, but keep marching. Make the ground shake with every step and change the winds when you speak, because if a butterfly can have its effect, imagine what your thoughts can do.