reread, revisit, rewrite

I read a sentence in a novel the other day that was so beautifully written I had to read it twice. Instinctively, I thought to myself, I wish I could write a sentence like that. Pages later I was still thinking about the sentence, wishing it was mine. By the end of the end of the chapter, however, I came to the conclusion that all of the sentences I was so thirstily coveting would never be mine because they were not my story to tell. When we begin to focus our perspective back onto our own path, wanting and wishing seem to fall away. It didn’t, however, stop me from rereading it again before closing the book and falling asleep for the night.

Sometimes I start making a list of all the places I still want to visit. There are a lot of them. And whenever I start to write them, I can’t help but revisit all of the places we have already been. There is a video on my phone from last winter with June walking into the ocean, a canvas of pink rising from the water or perhaps maybe all of that pink sky was simply suspending there alone in space, it’s hard to tell the difference between earth and sky sometimes. But, I think about that night often. There were so many reasons we shouldn’t have been at that beach with the sky the color of a little girl’s birthday cake, but we were. It was our first night in St. Augustine and we couldn’t resist the chance to explore. Opportunities only matter if you take them, I’m sure I heard that somewhere once, but I can’t remember now.

This morning the sky is black with no pink in sight. It isn’t often that I am awake at this hour. Lately, I have been letting June act as my alarm clock. A habit that gives me no free time during the day, but plenty of much-needed sleep. You win some, you lose some. Whether it was the cold house or the blackened sky that dragged me from sleep so early, I am not sure. But I’ve come to this place like so many mornings before, ready to write and rewrite, my mind digging for peace in these stories, new and old.