Chapter 1

I have the most remarkable news.
Then again, some people are not surprised. I suppose they would say that it has been a long time in the works. That's always true in retrospect. The signs were there. The pieces fit together. The symphony has begun.
So where to start? Of course, you want me to start at the beginning. Or perhaps to start at the present and incorporate flashbacks whenever a tangent needs further explanation. Neither option prove to be palatable for me. There has to be more than the obvious to tell the story.
A good romance, or a mystery, or betrayal might make you interested, ask yourself the question: Will it satisfy me? After you have read it, will you want to read again? Or will you have found completion?

But here I am, staring the goldfish who swim in infinite circles. The ones who know when I enter the room and push their way to the surface - anxiously awaiting a few flakes to fall from heaven. The ones who are content in their world.

I long for things which I name impossible. The boy who lives too many miles away. The smart one. The gifted, caring, and terribly funny one. The one whose vulnerabilities I've been allowed to glimpse at times. The one I rush home at Christmas hoping to see. Perhaps even talk to. Perhaps even fall in love with. Infatuation does strange things to the mind. It blurs the possible and impossible into swirls and knots. A maze of what if's and maybe's.

And daisy petals fall silently to the dust path. Inbetween rocks and leaves and that pesky broad-leaved grass that's more of a weed than anything. The wind flowing gently through the poplar leaves. The same trees I grew up with. Walking through forests to get to the wild blueberry patch. Stopping on the way home to pick the wild strawberries growing in the ditch. Arriving home to fresh cucumber sandwiches - the juice sucked up by big warm, rich slices of fresh bread. Then off for long afternoon naps on the floor beside the picture window with the sunlight streaming in.