♥

So, for Valentine's Day my sis posts on her lovely blog this crushingly beautiful song by Mary Chapin Carpenter:

The video's not much to see, but the song just laid me out, and when you see the lyrics laid out, too, you understand that part of the song's effect comes from its structural perfection, viz.:

Jericho

You can't see me yet

Seeing takes a long, long time

From the outside in

Measuring in shift and sign

As you let your eyes adjust

To the darkness deep within

Sifting through the ash and dust

We are the places that we've been

You can't hear me yet

Listening takes a long, long time

And I've so much to tell

But words die on these lips of mine

In the stillness you may sense

Everything I long to say

Unraveling these golden threads

The walls will all come down this way

You don't know me yet

Knowing takes a long, long time

And time is all we have

Never traveling in straight lines

So memorize each turn and twist

And just be careful as you go

For if a love is a labyrinth

Then my heart is Jericho

The song is built as carefully as a city, or my own high-walled heart, which tumbled down into a heap of rubble and tears this morning, listening over and over, going farther into the center of the song, as easy or arduous a journey as this old map of Jericho might make it.

I listened to the song as if I were singing it to my kids, my darling spousette, my folks, my siblings, all the friends I haven't seen or heard or known in years (or ever, in the song's deep way of knowing). I listened to it as if they were singing it to me. I listened as if my one-month-old granddaughter, the biggest little thing that's happened in the long, long time since I last posted here, were singing it.

"You don't know me yet..." Aw, jeez. I'm a sniffling mess here.

Here's the thing. If you're reading this, I probably love and miss you. It's Valentine's Day. Be mine.

xo
J