The Reunion

Sitting in the back yard, taking in the sounds and smells of the world around me with a keen new sense of appreciation. I reflect with an overwhelming rush of gratitude, the kind of rush I used to seek through booze and blow, except now without the guilt and shame of addiction and affliction.  I felt a sort of body buzz, like the fingers and toes of every tiny nerve in my body were stretching out and reaching for more of this feeling, like a new born baby reaching for it's mother.  As I embraced this buzz, I almost missed the vibrating of my cell phone from the pocket of my blue jeans.  The realization that it wasn't organic, but electronic, abruptly took me out of my zone.  I looked down at my phone, it read: Text Msg.  A local number, but one I didn't recognize.  I opened the body to read the message.  A simple period.  Nothing more.  A goddamn punctuation mark.  A back and forth of question marks and nonsense followed, seemingly becoming a game of cat and mouse that I was losing patience for.  As the typing tryst was coming to an end, the stranger on the other side signed off with startling and familiar phrase.  "Have a festive day" the message read.  My heart fell out of my chest.  The air emptied from my lungs.  All of my body parts stopped working one by one, as if I was gradually becoming paralyzed by fear, excitement, panic, and a rebirth of hope that could never be explained in any prose or publication. I was unclear of her motives or desires, and focused on one thing and one thing only.  She was back.  I didn't care if she was back for just a brief moment, to whisper her displeasure and hatred and then vanish to a world free of my name, my face, my memory.  At this second, right now, she is back......and I felt whole again, if just for that moment.