The Heart Knows (Its Home)

There’s a beautiful picture of you, my darling, I think it’s always been there, in the window looking out to the garden in the house at Davis. You’re a little girl, perhaps twelve, wearing a pretty reddish pink polka dot dress and holding a kitten in your arms, a slender red watch on your little left wrist. I have gazed at this photo – like others – so many many times, boring my eyes into yours, willing my soul to leave my body and inhabit the place with you where you now reside. When last I looked upon it, I was with your mom. It was the last day of my visit and your dad was taking me to SMF in a few hours. As I sat there at the indoor patio table gazing at the little girl you, I asked your mom about it. How old were you, exactly? What was that little watch you were wearing? Which of the collection of famous family cats was in your sweet little arms? Your mother told, my sweetheart, that you were about twelve (as I say), that she had just picked you up from your ballet class, that the watch was one of a pair of them that both she and you used to wear out together. She told me the name of the kitty, too. I’ll have to ask again. It’s slipped my mind because of what happened next. She left the room and came back a moment later with the very same pretty little dress you were wearing in the picture and put it down on the table by me. I burst into tears that grew into great, heaving sobs of hyperventilation. I sat there, my love, lightly touching your little dress, my heart aching and soaring and longing to be near its home – you. And I’ve felt this way from the first - I know you know – so overwhelmed by the beauty and rightness and true compass of your spirit that my very being trembles and quakes to have been found by you. For it is you, Summer. It is you, my love, that I was born for. Whatever life has left for me is a just an unwinding until I am returned to you. My heart knew it from the first. And as I sat there falling apart I was reassured – it is you, my love. My True One. My little sweetheart. It is you.