Tetelestai.

I crave creative space and time and energy. I crave because I lack.

But Papa reminds me daily— that creativity comes in all of the shades and flavors. Not just in brushes and palettes of liquid music.

Like watching a bright yellow butterfly flutter along my favorite patch of trail, for what seemed like an entire mile or more. Her wings so whimsically dancing in a little bit of chaotic mania mixed with such grace and elegance that my thoughts stopped rhythmically beating inside of my mind and I was simply lost in the reverie of her perfectly inconsistent motion that seemed halfway lost on a breeze and halfway very much determined to go where she was to be.

Or perhaps the small arrangement of rustic hued leaves that Lola and I picked from the flowering vine that wraps lusciously around the wooden swing in Mom and Dad’s backyard garden. We sat together, seventeen year-old her and forty-two year-old me— in quiet togetherness. We had both chosen to turn our phones off for some digital detoxing, and had intentionally found our way outside into the fresh, clean air, straight onto the swing that seems to constantly whisper her invitation of serenity: “Won’t you please come sit for a little while, my Dear?”

Some days I listen and respond. Some days I pretend as though I don’t hear her healing suggestion— I just busy myself along with the have-tos I’ve assigned myself to make me feel like I don’t stink at Life quite as much as I used to.

I snapped this photo to share with a potential husband candidate. We had made it through two whole, what I thought were, amazing dates, and the last words we exchanged, in person, were that we liked each other. Fast forward a week— and our fiery energy connection had all-but completely dissipated, and I was wondering if this was yet another failure-to-launch, paralyzed by betrayal and fear, oh-my-gosh, I thought we liked each other, he’s not really going to drop off on me now, is he?

I had shared with him on date number two, clad in my Gramma McClane’s diamonds and a hot pink barbie shift, that there was a whole huge part of me that I hadn’t really shared with him yet. The artist me. The woman who doesn’t keep tidy painted nails because I work with my hands. The gigantic chunk of me that sees music dance inside of my mind’s eye like flowing silks lit from every angle with veri-lites and the colored films of my childhood’s fancy. The peace of me that can only find synchronicity between feelings and thoughts and data through what most people know as synesthesia. But I just know as Home.

My Dad always fed me color and light. Always.

And although his light is dimming.. although he fades a little more with each day that passes, and his aura is faint— I still see his halo of prismatic power.

Sometimes I miss him already. As if death has already taken him from me.

Other times, I slip into the future me and re-live as I live the memories of kissing him on the head every time I leave his presence.. and sneaking in hugs every time he stands, thinking to myself: “Steal just one more before he goes.”

Hip hop hooray, hooo, hayyy hooo.

These spilled out thoughts feel like dazzling sunrays shining through jagged shards of beauty and pain and the contradiction of their coexistence, as the delicious beat of a 1990s hiphop burned cd tells the alluring tales of some notoriously bad behavior while bass pumps blue- and purple-toned adrenaline into my veins.

I write because I am still here. And because I crave creative space and time and energy. And I was wrong— I lack nothing.

Tetelestai.

Love you, mean it.