Sidewalk Chalk

Musings.

The girls laboured all afternoon. Sun kissed and radiant as they played like children. Their unlikely project? Covering the concrete step, where the buskers sit, in sidewalk chalk. It was hours that they devoted - laughing as they laboured away the sunny, Sunday afternoon.
Where were the buskers that day? Maybe enjoying a Sabbath respite, letting other artists fill the streets with other kinds of art. Maybe hungover.

But today, the step is clear. Mostly clear. There lingers just the faintest outline of a rainbow, only visible to the keen and determined eye. The eye determined to see it. Everything else washed away. All the rest disappeared into the street with last night’s deluge of rain. All the rest just vanished like the notes of the song now playing, caught up in the wind before anyone got a chance to enjoy them.

But the busker plays them anyway.

I guess it makes me wonder, what is it all for? The chalk on the step? The song in the wind?
Something in me is awakening, yearning, leaning, pressing, longing.
Something in me is tapping my foot.
Something in me is picking up this soundless melody - perceiving invisible colours - dreaming intangible dreams.

What is it all for? Too hard to say. Too impossible to say. To limiting to try.
I just want to be a part of it.
I want to be a part of making things beautiful, even if it can’t last forever.
I want to offer something that might disappear into the breeze, or run down the drain.

But I am scared to.

I am scared to let beauty live in the eye of the beholder and not chronicled in some folder for posterity. I am scared to let Margo say her first word only to have it caught up in the wind - a first fruits sacrifice. I want to save every moment, every wave, every babbled nonsensical word, every wet, open-mouthed kiss. Every cuddle. Every brave attempt at standing. I want to canonize her life - recording and curating her. Making sure I don’t miss anything. Don’t lose anything.

But she is slipping through my fingers. Shapeshifting before my eyes, shedding the very skin I’m aching to kiss forever as she outgrows it. And she isn’t mine. She doesn’t belong to me. She’s like the sidewalk chalk on the busker’s step. She’s like this song on the wind. The more I try to memorize the less I actually hear. The more I try to save the more clearly I see every note caught up in the wind as it floats through the trees and out over the ocean

I’m scared to spend myself and have nothing to show for it. Nothing left over. I’m scared to dream these big dreams because they reach as far as the stars - stars I could never hold in my hands and keep.

But. What else is there?
But. I’m just a wisp of smoke anyway. Here today. Gone tomorrow.
No matter how much I record.
So maybe it’s in the letting go I am remembered.
So maybe it isn’t saving every moment that will show Margo that she is loved. Maybe it’s not in the holding on.
Maybe in the letting go, maybe in the wasting, the spending, the throwing into the wind, the faint impression of my life’s love, poured out in reckless abandon, could still show up somewhere, hidden in her, when the sun hits her just right.