Choosing Today

A feeling, temporary, wings through my body and emotions.

A certain powdered sugar and fried sweetness that I taste and smell, evokes the joy of past Christmases and plates of rosettes and krumkake accumulating on the counter. The feeling lingers for a moment, dissipates, leaves a smile on my face.

If I choose, I can sustain the moment, breathing the current fragrance once again, summoning other related memories. But, soon I move through the day left with remembered traces of the moment.

Another feeling wings through my body and emotions. “I don’t think I ever loved you.” Trembling body, tight throat, air crushed from my lungs. A feeling in that moment that I just might die.

Still, I stood there, hearing the words in my head long after you walked away. No longer a feeling, but a trance I buried myself in.

My trance surfaced repeatedly, not summoned by a transitory moment, but by the chain I tethered to it.

I carried that chain too long. I am ready for new feelings. Perhaps, they’ll thrill like the wind through my hair as I ride waves on the Mississippi. Or, maybe they’ll summon tears when an antiseptic smell reminds me of a loved one’s death. Or, perhaps something new will happen with its own sights, and sounds, and feelings to remind me that I am alive, no longer in a trance.

Let it be. Let me feel all of today. Let it be.