I Wish You

 

 

 

“I Wish You” - Meredith Heller

I wish you mouthfuls of laughter and warm cozy hands and bowls of nourishing soup and starry-starry light glittering at the periphery of your eyes as if someone or something is tapping you gently on the shoulder, whispering a song from your childhood that makes you smile and weep at the same time, in a good way, like when you know who you are.

I wish you the scent of lime blossoms and the taste of salt on your lips and a silver feather tattooed across your belly, gentle and elusive as a water mark, and the inviting rhythm of rain on your roof that wakes you up at night and draws you from your bed to dance a little in the darkness with a prayer in your body.

I wish you a loving letter from an old friend when you least expect it, with words that warm you like small sticks of kindling that catch and smoke and smell of ancient sandalwood forests and the tiny blue birds that sing at night, unaware of the hour of their rapture, and a low-slung moon, lying on her back, points up, like a bowl of light.

I wish you pan-fried plantains drizzled with honey and the lonely sound of a fog horn at dusk after it’s rained all day, and the sweet, rich, gentleness you feel in every cell of your body when you’re kind to another human being.

I wish you the stillness of the great blue heron and the way my heart grows wings when I see the sunlight spangle the water, and the feel of your back, leaning against these rocks here, that have soaked up the sun all day, filling their veins with light and humming their minerals into your bones, and this wide blue sky that touches the curves of the mountain tenderly with his hand and the way she arches up to meet him.

I wish you the cool clean whiteness of shells, the sacredness of bones, the memory of flight that leaves its signature in the feather. I wish you the wide wingspan of a low swooping owl as it turns 90 degrees on its side, to fly between trees in the forest, as you walk home alone one night, listening for your song.