Author: touring from the park bench
A blogger, columnist, educator, researcher, social media enthusiast, and writer with a zest for knowledge; Brenda is the founder of "Touring from the Park Bench"; formerly the column and now, the blog. Her diversified background has enabled her to research and write in Arts and Sciences, knowledgeably and creditably. Her writing themes include Behavioral Sciences, Christianity, Criminal Justice, Education, Fitness, Healthcare and Informatics, Lifestyle, Psychology, and Sociology. Brenda thrives on researching and learning, which has enabled her in work in Technical Writing and Communications for over five years. Though varied in her traits, she has considered the distinctions of others, as a contribution, an honor, and a privilege to behold. She acknowledges her acceptance through collaboration and communication with professionals in other disciplines, forming meaningful partnerships through the culmination of challenging projects. She feels It is through interaction that awareness, integration, and success in finding solutions to mutual problems are constructed.
She sees adaptability as her best characteristic, and modesty as her worst. She currently lives in Florida with her youngest daughter and her chihuahua. She has professed in words life lessons such as learning the day is scarier than the night, for you will see the harm that befalls you, and betrayal is painful. She's learned unconditional love is never stronger as seen in the very young and in the very old. She's learned no matter what emotion a person is experiencing a cuddly puppy can make you re-evaluate so much. She's learned the only certainty in life is death- so, be ready. She's learned the most experienced emotions are forgiveness, grief and hope, and that patience is the most taught virtue. She often finds nature as deeply overwhelming and has come to realize how important grounding is for the body and soul. It’s the fleeting moments people don’t take advantage of like when caught in a rainstorm, when snowflakes begin to fall and melt as soon as they touch the warmth of your skin.
AUTHOR'S WORDS~
"Have you ever watched over a cocoon, as it changes into a butterfly, or a rose bud as it blooms? It is almost like watching your children grow, all too quickly, they aren’t children anymore, and neither are you. Live life while you can for you do not get a second chance.”
Fragments of the Heart
Life is hard. I understand not every person who comes into our lives are meant to stay. At times, we want more, and we cling to the hourglass, as the sands of each fragment are washed away by my tears. Whether it is my tortured mind, fragmented by moments and memories, or the ache of my body, replaying every tender caress. My mind, body, and soul fragmented by the feelings within, yearn to interlace our fingers with each other. The warmth of your hand, molded into mine and made just for me; how it haunts me, as mine lies empty, my arms lie empty, and body craves to feel your breath on my neck once again.
Day or night, I still feel your body pressed against mine in a loving embrace. I read the words etched on paper, and I hear the songs with hidden messages within. Maybe, it’s only the imagination that sees you- a glimpse of your shadow- as words are silenced in my throat, and I catch my breath as I look back. Was it you, or was it just me, again.
There are times when my brain rebels and says, “No more will you cling to hope, these memories are banished.” My body screams against it, and within the fire slowly dies in this cruel reality. Yes, there’s a reason for everything. It’s just that life is hard enough without the pain of this fragmented heart. Life is so hard, without you.
The One Who…
We will meet many people in our lifetimes. Each person you meet will serve some purpose, but not all of them will be positive. Each person is neatly tucked away with a label of our choosing. Some will be friends, some enemies, some acquaintances, and some we will choose to remain as strangers. Some will be a combination of each of these people, and we classify them as “people I know.” Each of these people will bring something or many things to your life. Perhaps it is confidence, laughter, shame, disappointment, or anger, but whatever they bring with them, they also leave something behind for you. Regardless, they have each served a purpose or provided a lesson for you to hold. And you know these people are meant to be “people I know” for you are more comfortable with the memories, than the people.
There will be one person who you find who seems to be a four-leaf clover. This person may be that someone for whom you never looked. You just happened upon them, and no matter how much you long to, need to, or want to leave them as a stranger? Leaving them behind is as if you are losing a piece of you – your heart, your life, your light, and your soul. This person will be beautiful, even on their worst days. They will be stern and scolding at times, but you understand that they are only doing so in love. Everything about that person is as familiar to you as if you had known them your whole life. This person will feel they have no place in the world. They will feel cast aside, like an old comfortable blanket. Even on their worst day, your heart is full, and you only wish they could see themselves through your eyes. And no matter how many times you tell them you love them, you show them in the things you do; they still wonder “why me”? Sometimes it is all you can do to like them. For this is the person, you will feel in your heart every day of your life. This person makes you strong when you are vulnerable. This person you smell, feel, and long for when you are sad or hurt. This person you do not want to be without today, tonight or tomorrow. Above all, this is the one person with whom you want to be weak.
We Are One
We call them partners, lost loves, a part of the past not gone from our heart; for some, this is merely a break-up. It is a means to an end that brings about the room in our lives for the person to whom we were “meant” to be. These people come along once in a lifetime. They are our “Sleepless in Seattle,” our “The Notebook,” our “You’ve Got Mail” kind of love. Enter one person into your life who touches a part of you, not even you feel you knew you had.
You may have spent days, weeks, months, or years looking for that someone to be your other half. The other person who comes into your life and makes the two of you, a couple. Then, there are our soul mates. These people are not your ultimate desire. The soul mate is much broader than the physical. This person does not make you forget your life from before you met them but will change the way your saw life – it is as if life is more meaningful now. You consider the relationships before, and although, you have shared chemistry with others, it’s just no longer there, once your soulmate arrives. The term soul is what changes with your mate. You can have a mate who loves you, cares for you, and provides you with comfort. Your soul mate offers: 1) unconditional love, 2) brings a sense of peace to your world when you feel out of sorts, 3) supports your dreams even if they change, 4) provide you with nurturing and presence, 5) prepares your heart to live in contentment or full of grace, 6) the soul mate makes you a better person, 7) the soul mate encourages you to do right by you, by them, and by others, and most important, 8) the soul mate feels connected to you ~ they are known to you. There is no greater love than when two soul mates meet. The passion of love found is one love that has been there all along. It’s as if you are waking up from a dream; that dream being the life you had before. The life where a couple or a mate from the past, seems to be a stranger at times. Once two people come together, they become a couple. Once two soul mates come together, they become one person, whole once again.
Perhaps we will all meet the one who confirms we are not alone in this world. We carry love in our hearts, our thoughts, our very souls. We know this person was not meant to be absent from our lives because once is just enough to remember every detail of every encounter you had with this person. From the moment you met, your heart began to beat, not as two lub-dubs, but as one. It’s so hard to explain how this feels, but the part that defies explanation is why? Why would we meet someone who would not be part of our lives? Why would a soulmate enter your life, make it worth living, and then exit, as if part of a game? Love is not a revolving door, but your heart will seek many turns, love many people; until you realize, “what is true love?” It’s a combination of so many things ~ “I love you,” “I miss you,” “I have been looking for you all of my life”; most certain of all is when the feelings for you, turn to us. Once those feelings turn to we, the two of you and I, will have become one.
Musically Inclined
Always enjoyed listening to music, and some days it’s all I can do to find you still. New music doesn’t interest me as old songs do. Maybe it’s a fast song with a catchy beat that moves me to the edge of my seat; you would say, “It scares you.” Perhaps, it’s slow and melancholy; enough to escape the sadness, but not enough to fill the emptiness. The songs of James Taylor that leave you breathless and spent. There are days I see you smile and others, and I hear you laugh. Some remind me of the worry in your eyes, while sometimes, I wish I could feel you near, even though you are miles away. They say, “Music is the voice of the soul, and it can move you in ways mere words cannot.” Music moves me, but until it drives me back into your arms, where love seeps through my skin, warms my blood, and bonds to the soul in me? I can honestly say, I get through the day with words; although, I have lost my voice. Regardless of the music that plays, I have misplaced the very part of me that was at one time, musically inclined. And all that’s left are the words I write when I can’t get you out of my head.
The One
Often we meet someone and ask, “Is this the “one”?Are you the “one”? We ourselves don’t even know what it means. Yet, we seek it. While we do, people come into our lives, show us attention, and we know we have fallen.
We don’t seek the “one”, but we stumble upon them. They weren’t dropped into our lives, just suddenly, they are there. We can go for days and not want to talk to anyone, but we need to tell them so much. We can stay in our little closet of the world, but something will happen and your two worlds will collide. Afterwards, not a day will pass that either of you will be able to let those feelings go. From the moment your hands meet and your fingers are gently interwoven; so will your souls.
You were not the first person to hold their hand, but they will be the only “one” to touch your soul, before your lips or your bodies meet. And that is a feeling you will never forget.
@mcpoems3
Still
At some point, people stop looking for love. The waiting for those moments of which fairytales are made, stops. Life is simple – just be present. Every day, as routine as life can get, until this person arrives; this someone, so familiar. No, it’s not a love at first sight. It’s a feeling of coming home. Everything, the touch, the warmth of the skin, the way the lips form a smirk, before the mouth chases that smile out of hiding. It’s the way the hand moves to fit perfectly, as if molded for that exact moment. It’s magic, right? No, magic is spontaneous, but this- this is not a deja vu moment. This is a tranquil place, where a sense of calmness feels the mind and heart with the affirmation that every road not taken was shrouded in meant to be.
Thoughts of yesterday encouraged wondering if, when, or why things happen as they do. Not knowing is painfully sobering and it makes every memory so lucid. Perhaps, it was an illusion of time? Wrapped in those arms was a place time didn’t exist. Nothing mattered at any moment- not today, yesterday, or tomorrow. Nothing other than being present with you. I’ve never felt so alive. Nothing could restrain my heart, nor could it be released- not even by time.
The peculiarities of time occur every day- each day it’s getting there early or running late. There’s something about the exact moment when this beautiful soul comes along; time ceases to matter. The hands of time echo loudly now, and the days and nights have become haunted by holding on to yesterday. And the only feeling left in this heart is hope. Perhaps, you felt it too? I pray if you didn’t, you will; you feel a love so great that no amount of time could ever be enough, but you’d give the last five minutes of your life holding on to whatever was offered. I pray when you awake with the timekeeper, you pause, and feel. After you have slipped on your watch, and make the drive to work, you wrap your hand around your coffee cup, and you feel it’s warmth. I hope it brings peace -quietness I know you need so much in your world. Most of all though, I pray you feel, me – still.
Fall
Moments suspended in time; how they linger in nature’s delicate hands. I often marvel at the simple reminders I encounter. From the discovery of conversations, holding your hand, or the warmth of your body as you held me close – all such little things that change like the seasons. From a Spring day in May, when meeting you felt oddly familiar. Summer welcomed every minute through each other’s eyes. What a magical place to be!
Why is it always something about the Fall? As time’s symbol of change, I should be prepared for it. The colors on the leaves, the falling through the air, so delicately touching the ground; and you drifting further away. Like looking through memories of time, photos remind me of a place where time stood still. You must travel back sometimes to revisit?
I suppose I stay in the cold Decembers of the year. There I feel the summer warmth, bask in the awe of Spring, and feel the autumn fall like rain, I still sense the cold, and I shudder. The cold rain falls and I remember that change was the only option we had. Throughout the days of tears and the feeling of my heart being torn into pieces; I still long for a harvest moon, the touch of your hand, and your smile.
I wonder, will visit me in my dreams tonight? Will I feel nature’s warmth, as the sun peeks through the clouds like Spring? Will the crispness of Winter freeze our hearts as it pushes the winds of change? Perhaps, the Summer sun will warm me as your embrace did; or it could just be the Fall. The rains of time could return and remind me of yesterday, and the tomorrow that misses us every day.
Do you feel the chill, as I do? The coldness that surrounds you and the warmth of my body in your arms stir the memories? And once again, when Autumn is upon us, my tears fall and I miss you. And for me, every rain of every season brings another day for me to remember the fall.
Every Time
As the days pass and time is moved by numbers, hand chosen moments can’t erase you. Every time the day, marked with the uncertainty of the last day approaches, every moment remains preserved in the sun that warms my face. And I wonder if you feel it too. Other times, it is the moon, and I wonder if you are staring back at me. Every time, I think of you.
Every time the minutes turn to seconds, the memories sift through my heart’s hourglass. Sands of time? No, not you. You are the dust of marbles, not mere powders affected by humidity and shifts of the waves of time. You, my love, are not a clock I can stop or a watch I can remove. You are like a pocket watch on a chain, linked with beats of my heart. You are every particle that not even the tears from my eyes can displace.
No, when you sift through my mind, I still love you as timeless as my hourglass, and I smile; reliving the moments of yesterday. Not the power of the ocean, nor the winding minutes that pass can take away the love that waits for you. Time is fleeting, but there are some moments that stand still in time. And those moments are sealed in the promise of always, and in – every – time.
Away from the Storm
Another night looking up at the sky, and I close my eyes, tightly for just a moment. I look back over my shadow, and away. The familiar breeze surrounds me with the scent of your skin. I see your lips as your tongue moistens them. I inhale, deeply as the waves crash against me. One after another, until the footing beneath me is chased away with the touch of your hand. The waves were terrifying; I watched the fury of the water punish everything- the ships, the jagged rocks, the coastline, and yet, I am spellbound. Every time I feel my balance waiver, I feel your hand take mine. The darkness of the storm could not dim the light- your light. The staircase on my left, protects me from harm, as if you were standing next to me. Taking a deep breath, tears run down my cheeks, I see a flickering light. I turn off the switch and reach to close the door behind me. I muster a grin- I hear you say, “Let me be your lighthouse!” And once again, I reach to my left, I reach for you, and the darkness carries my heart, my love, our shadows, away from the storm.
