Thank you so much to Sue Vincent for providing these wonderful pictures and the opportunity to write for #writephoto.

All You Need Is Love

Primordial. This is my thought as I step onto the cabin’s porch and survey the expanse of mountains and lake.

Once upon a time this place represented the brightness in my childhood, refuge, playground, aspiration. I always thought that when I became an adult, I would live here. Listen to loons and whippoorwills, watch deer and bears and foxes. But when you’re a kid, you forget that adults need to make a living, and there was none to be made here.

Jake, my friend, savior in tattoos and beard, brought me here to heal. On my last music tour, demons devoured me. I let them. I surrendered to hedonism, feeling good in the moment. My last memory was of falling. Teeth, mouth mashing into pavement. Dirt and grime spitting out, with blood. Dreams since have me falling and gasping awake, clinging to air, crying out until reason pours over me icily.

He hands me a mug of dark roast, cream and a dash of sugar, and we sit, facing outward, in the morning chill, white breaths expanding, before the sun rises above the mountains transforming the water silvery pink.

We don’t talk. We never talk. Yet, somehow, we communicate better than others who share a multiplicity of words.

I feel his dark eyes on me. He smiles. His smiles, so infrequent, are a megawatt sunburst and always prelude something more. He grabs my cold hand, kisses my knuckles, and sings: “All you need is love” before singing the rest of the tune in his formidable baritone.

Joy bursts from my heavy heart followed by laughter, my laughter, not forced, crystalline, pure. In the midst of so much bad, Jake’s delivered me to ecstasy. Our fingers entwine and just now, I think, yes, I can do tomorrow.

end

3/4/2018

Sascha Darlington