There is a darling softness
here in the heart.
A softness that holds my love for you
and all the times your smile
held me in safety.
I will miss you, always,
in the quiet.
My heart has grown into
so many pieces
of you.
But there you are, darling softness.
Keeper of my hopes, dreamer of my dreams.
How do you hold my heart, this night?
Full of dear, sweet memories.
Full of dear, dear
days and nights gone by.
It’s just gone 12:30, a new year has rolled in.
Of all the people I have to wish a dear and beautiful new year to…it is you, bloggy friends. My soul folk.
I ache to express what words cannot.
I love celebrating New Year’s Eve, which is quite funny, really, considering my perspective has changed quite a bit over the years.
What is a year, but a day after a day after a few hundred more days?
What is a day, but a spinning of the giant ball upon which we sit?
A year is a human construct.
All of life as we perceive it is.
Can you imagine the first cavemen sitting around the campfire discussing who they aim to be ‘next year’? To them, the sun rises, the sun falls.
There is no day. No month. No year.
Think of all we frame in a year. Time frames can limit us in ways I’m not sure we entirely understand.
But I will still always celebrate the new year as a beautiful way to express gratitude for life. It’s especially beautiful to have a reason to connect and celebrate with each other.
Anyway. ☺️
Happy new year, team.
I send you bucket loads of unconditional love and care.
Take it and sprinkle it every where.
xx Brooke
None of it makes a difference to me.
Some of you I barely know.
Some of you I have known and loved to the depths of my soul.
None of it matters.
Because each of you has my heart.
And each of you deserves to hear this on Christmas day:
Life is a journey.
You are not always going to get it right, and it is not always going to make sense.
But you will live.
Isn’t
that
wonderful?
I so adore you, bloggy friends.
Thank you, again, for allowing me to be as I am.
Merry Christmas.
Love, Brooke.
I miss you, my beautiful bloggy friends.
My goodness my heart misses you.
It is truly a strange thing, that here, more than any other place, my truth shines her beautiful light.
Everywhere else on earth, I am partly starving.
Here, I am free.
Like a feather on the wind.
I am free.
Thank you for holding me, here.
xx Brooke
It’s been far too long since I’ve written like this.
I’ve just been reading over old diaries, feeling my voice through them, knowing my heart.
It made me think of how I used to do that, here. How I used to be unafraid, how I understood that sharing my heart was something I needed to do, like breathing.
I write my heart because I want you all to see it is okay to be vulnerable.
More than okay.
Necessary, even, if you are someone like me.
So I wanted to find you again, in this place, as myself.
And I wanted to tell you, whoever you are, whatever your story: it is okay to be yourself.
It is okay to be your beautiful, however you are, self.
As the ice drips
from this frozen heart,
here grows the beauty
of feelings gone by.
How I remember you,
dear echo of friendship.
How clear it has become that
kindness
was the angel there.
He bought it in 1946 for six pounds, which apparently was quite the sum back in the day. He’s 92 and wonderful, my darling neighbour, Joe, I’ll call him. The gigantic relic of a dictionary was his. Now it belongs to me.
Joe and I lounged in his well kept living room and sipped champagne to celebrate my family’s one year anniversary of owning our home. He had remembered, not us. We were flawed with gratitude and awe.
As we sat, he told me stories of his life; the pains, the joys, stories of beautiful friends and loved ones here and gone. I could have sat there all afternoon. Instead I settled for an hour and a champagne, and two home-made yoyo biscuits (made by a dear friend of his, and absolutely delicious, might I add.)
The dictionary came up in conversation and I mentioned how I’d planned to buy a special one myself, some day. Brooke, the writer; of course she’d need to invest in something so truly lovely, full of all that writerly goodness. And just like that, the dictionary, the precious illustrated dictionary, had become apart of our family.
I will cherish it for as long as I live. Not because it’s the dictionary I’ve always wanted, but because it will remind me of a beautiful soul that has touched my life deeply.
As I sat with him I told him, ‘Joe. You have such a pure soul,’ and it’s true. I’ve never felt a person quite like him and I wish there were more people in the world who felt as beautiful, to me.
The purest of hearts. The ones that lift us to be our best. The ones we all hope we might be for others.
I plan to go for tea again with him soon, my darling friend, Joe.
I cannot think of how I might repay his kindness.
She floats on the wind
as they stare.
And they will never know her
as their own.
Never see her truth
as anything other
than feathers in the garden.
Yet, she knows herself, dear.
And she knows, darling softness,
that a field of daisies
and daffodils
and dandelions waits for her
somewhere.
Where the soft things come together
at last.
Love
the word
is not enough.
Love
the feeling
is infinite.
brooke-cutler.com 