When astronauts return to earth’s grounded terrain after long stretches in space, their balance, eye pressure, and bone density suffer changes that we mere earthlings know nothing of. Some find that even their speech is affected. “I hadn't realized that I learned to talk with a weightless tongue," said the Canadian space flyer. i had not realized i had, either. i was circling the world i once knew, enclosed in my own capsule of loss.
You came into my life on the most bitter of winter mornings, when the blood in my veins seemed to start and stop, stymied by ice crystals yet warmed by the sight of You. You walked right into my muddled path, as surely as if You had been sent by some benevolent, universe ruler, and not merely the happenstance of a similar schedule.
Our lives began to intertwine, until i was tethered to You, knowing that my very breath was dependent on our being joined. And then You asked me: was it a sea of tranquility that i wanted? A life of predictability, where every moment was scripted by some vanilla authority on what should and shouldn’t be?
I don’t want peace, I said with certainty . I have had enough quiet, and peace, and silence to last me.
You leaned ever so gently down so that your lips grazed my ear, and whispered intensely, with an authority I always knew you had, but that you kept in check before my acquiescence.
So,then, what do you want?
i turned to face you and averted my gaze in deference to Your power, Your body terrra firma beneath my fingertips.
And as if someone else spoke, my tongue, weightless no more, formed the words, “i want earth. i want you. i want now.”
Rule Number 13: i must be both specific and explicit in my speech.
