TheBanyanTree: What I've Seen

[Maria Gibson]

I don't know the best parts of who you are.  I sense a passion in there, 
a smouldering and smoking being with so much to say. 

You say very little.  I am struck by what you do reveal and how you 
become very still on the outside when you speak of those events which 
were not still in your life.  I understand this survival technique; it's 
been known to get me by when the telling is rough.

Those windows to your soul; large, round, brown and haunting, are the 
place you can't always hide.  There is a talent, yes.  An ability to 
shut. them. down.  You've been doing this a long time, I think, and have 
become sadly good at it.  You have a smile that takes over your face and 
makes you squint and a bright sparkle that holds me; then a breeze from 
within pushes past and I watch the squint and sparkle retreat.  Like 
fallen leaves pushed by that breeze, they scamper away.  What comes is 
real and undeniable.  Before the final curtain, however, is a glimpse of 
your pain.  This is the gift that asks your listener to care. 

I care.

A great seething passion.  An urgency, a primal giving.  All there, all 
unspoken and heard very clearly.  Time waits with the speed with which 
it has always waited but for me feels slowed when what I desire is to be 
close to you.  Close enough to hear what you don't say and read what you 
don't write.  Close enough to be burned by the fire that glows within.

Maria