You don't understand love, until you understand this.

Hands are meant to be held.
Tightly.

-k.p.b.
Tuesday 
{October 5th 2015}

Thank you always.

Today is Tuesday. 

I'm in love with this day of the week almost as much as I am in love with the effortlessness of breathing right now.

I climbed a hillish slump of earth today and as I reached the top some sleeping beast inside me awoke. 

It brushed the leaves off of its snout, trotted in a circle for a moment to awaken its bones and then--

then it stretched its wings as far as the eye could possibly see. 

One couldn't believe the life that those wings brushed into my soul as it beat and beat against the perfect autmnness of the air.

In that moment life existed. 

The air was perceived as perfection to my senses.

The wind jostled my long braid and entered my spirit similarly. 

The disposition of flying overcame me. 

(We were the same thought.)

The wings that were rooted in my pulsing beast suddenly became my own and sprouted to the sky in an earnestness I did not know this earth could witness from me!

"Oh Autumn!" I cried with my head tilting backward as to satisfy my senses further.

"Oh blessed Moon that calls my name and Wind that speaks the language of flight and longing and freedom to my wings!" 

I spoke these things because I did not care if anyone could or could not hear me.

I could hear me and that was all that mattered.

If ever there was a person who had ever felt such effusive happiness I knew them not! For now I could not only feel free, but I could soar far above heartache and worry! Now I knew I was free as too seldom humans are not.

It felt exquisite because something whispered,

"Come as you are, not as you wish you were."

And I believed that little voice, for it was my own.

Oh how I love the sound of loose gravel against my shoes and the thought of worry far below them. 

To my dear sister, 

You are perfection of spirit and compassion.

To my lovely friend, my companion and guide--I love you more than the hikes we share, the boots your carelessly tossed from your feet and gave to me. 

To the one who thinks of nothing that is not love-driven:

You are the one I wish to watch every cloudless sunset with. 

Always dear sister. 

Thank you for the freedom loving you brings. 

How I love Tuesdays. 

How perfection comes in many packages.

Just so.

-k.p.b.

September 29, 2015

Tuesday

9:29PM

{On a day with sprinkled rain, incandescent autumn wind

 and a trail filled with nothing far greater than everything.}

Thank you Heavenly Father. 

Thank you always.

Another delayed thought >> december

By the way, it snowed on Christmas this year.
I don't know if I ever mentioned that.
It's kind of important.
(k.b.)

I'm only curious.

I'm only curious--

why wasn't I good enough for you?

Which part of me was it
you couldn't seem to stand?

Was it the way I chewed my food,
slowly and with subtle purpose?

Could it be the misshapen vision
of my heart
somehow
(for some odd reason I cannot name)
longing for your hand?

The socks I wore were strange.
The books I read were home to me.
My sense of correction a little too strong.

True, I could never love another thing more than I did the Autumn breeze,
but that was never suppose to mean we couldn't
at least try to prove that wrong.

You were never a Darcy,
believe me you could never even try.
Nor a Dean, a Hardy, a Wadsworth or even a Thomas.
But it didn't matter to me. 

All I saw, all I wanted was a spark.

A zang.
A burst of marble sunlight--
a song only I could hear, no matter
how sad the lyrics were.

But I guess some happiness is never meant to be.
Or perhaps it is happiness
that I am missing only because I wanted
you more
than I accepted myself.

Perhaps.

But what a lovely idea we would've been.
What a perfect array of
chaos and explosion we
could've given the sky,

like the stars.

-k.p.b.

9/20/15
11:58PM

letting go

There is something so very beautiful 
about letting go.

I know at first it feels like
fire
unfathomable and unadulterated 
flames; 

but I promise you
 with my fingers tracing swiftly over my 
swollen heart--
it gets better. 

It's worse than ripping off a bandage, 
but it feels infinitely 
different 
the feeling of weight that
 releases you.

And then all at once--
you can fly. 

It's incredible. 

(Just so.)

-k.p.b.

September 21. 2015
11:21PM
{Almost Tuesday}

Farewell: (Firecracker boy)
"Cold Moon" by: Zolas
"Better Man" by: Leon Bridges 
"Dirty Paws" by: Of Monsters and Men
"Sunburn" by: Ed Sheeran
"Paris" by: Magic Man
"I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" by: Sleeping At Last (cover)

To: the Autumn Wind

Have you ever stood at the precipice of unfathomable yearning
and the brisk ferocity of insanity?
If you ever know such a feeling, such a kick in the heart, 
my only advice is this:
Run until your demons can't catch you.

Allow me to explain:

I'm in love with something I can't have.
My heart hungers for a dark and sfumato creature 
that both stalks my happiness and chases my monsters away.
I'm in love with the Autumn coldness, 
the sweet and elegiac dance it plays with the bending trees and temperate music. 
I hear the wind whistle through my hair sadly;
It feels like the hands of a lover tracing the outline of my nose and 
suddenly I think, "The moonlight doesn't seem to be the only thing to touch my lips." 
But it's almost too much to bear.
Almost.

I'm in love with a person too. 
A boy much like Autumn.
I first saw him standing there with hair like
fire-crackers,
exploding with dark curls in such a fierce and extreme manner it excited me.
He was exciting himself.
He had a deep felicity about him. It lurked about his crimson-ridged lips 
and sparking blue eyes (much like the painting of the humanist by Raphael Sanzio da Urbino)that ensnared a helpless captive--me.
It never occurred to me I would one day regret 
that tumult of wavy nighttime. 
One never thinks they will regret one look in a strangers eyes or one unknowing desire to kiss their lips.
I guess.

It seems all I wanted was happiness I thought I was deserving of. 

Perhaps the only thing I deserve right now is loneliness.

This sounds like such a burden, 
such a heavy and dreadful thing to wish upon oneself,
but it's quite the opposite when you think about it. 
A poet once said, 
"I know what it is to be lonely, therefore I know what it is to be loved."

Just so.

I didn't think it would end this way--
wishing for a better epilogue or worse:
finding myself trapped in the first page of meeting him.
I have but one question for that blasted Autumn wind--
Is there ever a chapter of happiness for me? 
Does the white knight ever come for me or am I doomed 
to become the ivory hero myself?

How many times did I listen to the song of Autumn and pray it would sing 
just for me?
How many times did I have to mangle my own heart
with my own delicate hands?
Just so, 
It wasn't meant to be. 

As many things are. 

And still I hear that sweet and solemn music
rushing through me like an Autumn scream of wind. 
It jostles my skirt, tugging at my soul and 
softly whispers, "Why do you cry, girl?"
Why do I cry. 
Lips move but never quite understand--do they?

"Why do I cry?"
I could ask myself that question a thousand lucid times
and never find a perfect answer. 
I bet he could-- sweet sappy Autumn.
He always plays with a human's heart 
so recklessly
he must understand its function
entirely.

I wish I could blame misery on gravity. 
It seems much easier to say, 
"Cure you gravity. Curse you."
But it is not so.

I stay lonely, 
but never truly alone. 

At least someday I will understand what it truly means 
to be loved--
and to love so fiercely and unconditionally
the Autumn wind will curse my name just as I curse gravity
for not having me. 

Someday. 

k.p.b.

September 17, 2015 
12:29PM
Thursday

Post Script:
Songs for an elegiac heart: (CAUTION: this is not an antidote, rather just the opposite) 
"My Special Angel" Malcolm Vaughan 
"Dreamy Eyes" The Four Preps
"Unchained Melody" Perry Como
"Big Girls Don't Cry" Franki Valli and the Four Seasons
"You Send Me" Sam Cooke
"God Only Knows" The Beach Boys
"Dream a Little Dream of Me" Dean Martin (version)
"Georgia on My Mind" Ray Charles
"The Way You Look Tonight" Tony Bennett
"(Today I Met)The Boy I'm Gonna Marry" Darlene Love
"La Vie en Rose" Edith Piaf 
"Magic Moments" Perry Como
"What the World Needs Now is Love" Jackie DeShannon

"Rosie"

"My Girl with Night curls"

by: Kiersten P. Benson September 8, 2015 Wednesday 6:05PM

I saw her there --

with dark night curls

and a look of innocent 
mischief
about her.

She was wondrous to see,
a scarce star to be held
gently
inside 

your hands.

So tiny --

was she, 
yet so beautiful;

and so vast and perfectly 

alive.

Never did the Autumn ever
 wish
 to see such elegance,

nor tree bend 
to greet her smiling cheeks
with a brushing branch.

Jonquil her laughter
rang through
her ribs -- 
and through her small and
 fragile
figure like

a song --
the song of

little white flowers
 of Spring.

A breath of 
life.

She strikes like
red lips

in a pale 
world.

Rosie and pillowy
slapped by the petals 
of nothing -- 

her cheeks are
 infinitely
ridged as the mountains
above earth,

above every thing 

-- and one. 

- k.p.b.

/For "Rosie"/
 

If the stars were mine

There's a funny quality about me that rarely anyone understands that has ever known me. It's a simple thing, but stupid just the same: I am an extreme adventurer, and yet I hardly find a reason to prove that to anyone. I have yet to delight in the experience of flight. I do not speak any other world language apart from compassion and English. I don't even know how to drive. But, I've decided that adventure is all in the perspective of the host and I for one have had the biggest adventures of my life from where I'm sitting right now typing quickly.

Does it truly matter if I've never been on a plane? Are passports and train tickets essential when you're already on your own adventure now? Those things are just checklist items. The real adventure is the one you chose to experience right now. 

Don't get me wrong. 

I ache with more feeling than most people experience in a whole lifetime to feel the pressure of the atmosphere from inside the mechanical wings of an airplane. My feet yearn with sturdy conviction to feel the unsteady streets of cobblestone England and the soft country of France and to feel the warm waves of the Italian ocean breaking up the logic in my brain. I see cathedrals of forests, of saints and art and feelings I do not understand. I smell India like a slap of spices in my cupboard and sense the broken spirit of thousands I will never fully understand from places I will always feel I somehow don't belong. My eyes shed the tears of new people I'll fall in love with and ones I'll find peculiar as they find me. I see hearts broken, hands that dance to music I've never heard and ghosts of stories I'll never forget, even if I wish to. Hardly another person could compare to how desperately I believe that there are no accidents in this life and how that somehow means someday I will be destined to see the world and to understand it as my soul seemingly already does. 

So I woke up this morning thinking of all the wondrous things I felt, I did and I remembered about this summer and then like a leaf collapsing from a summer forsaken tree--it hit me. This summer is gone. But somehow, I am not sad. I thought to myself quite deeply, "Why is that?"

I am taken back to a moment not long ago with a dark backdrop of night and a center-stage filled with stars...somehow it relates to my travel-stricken dream and then I feel I am in that moment once more.

It began with an idea. 

Or a text, as it's called today.

It was from my sister Jessica inviting me to the upcoming meteor shower that very night! How incredible!
I admit, I was delighted and excitement began to penetrate from my little toes all the way into my heartbeat. It is something that is hard to explain to another, because I love the stars more deeply than most anything else. They are personal. So personal I hardly just sit outside with them, I listen to them. I beg them for questions and songs and tales of years ago. I see their outlines and wish that someday we could have our little talks every moment of the day and not just at night when the weather permits. Oh how the stars are more of friends than I've ever known. They glitter as if they are eyes lighting up when you walk into the room or telling them an exciting story. They sing as if it were the last and first song this earth has ever heard and oh, how they dance when the music is so softly sad. They are the most exquisite beings this earth has, apart from humans. 

But this idea, this message I received was so dearly exciting to me because it meant I was given an excuse to sit outside all night with my dear friends and watch them dance and sing and twirl all the night through--all. night. through. What could more incandescent?
Nothing, to be sure. 

So day slipped into evening and evening collapsed into night and then the real enchantment began. We walked outside with a bundle of blankets in outstretched arms and climbed upon the trampoline at one o'clock in the morning, our spirits more feverish for this natural phenomenon about to commence. With blankets puddled around our small bodies and nothing but expansive heavens as our station, we were ready for our adventure to begin. 

It's funny. Sometimes I feel perfectly capable, even preferable to silence when watching the exquisite stars above me. I don't know, I guess I feel they deserve some sort of reverence or respect to their unalterable beauty and so naturally I assumed everyone would feel the same way. And maybe I was just being a little daring in the hopes that we could watch quietly and speak of things that matter deeply as a sort of reverence to the elegant beings bravely falling and crashing through the heavens just for us. But it seems I was out of sorts to everyone else. They laughed and tickled and teased each other mercilessly and it was then I realized I had a choice--I could sit quietly and be unwanted by nearly everyone beside me (except perhaps my brother Adam, who quite frankly wanted nothing more than to go to sleep) or I could join in the innocent tumult and try to understand my fellow friends delightfully. 

I think you can figure out which one the fellow adventurer chose. 

Time began to pass and I remember amid giggling and talking and feeling wildly alive so late into the night that it was a strange thing watching the stars fall and flicker as if they had a choice. Sometimes I'd picture beautiful creatures, not quite like humans, dancing through a graveyard of glowing stones and when the music was seemingly quiet, no one moved very much. But then some angelic being would sing and suddenly the cemetery was alight with moving creatures in scintillating gowns and suit coats merely doing what they were destined to do in a moment moved by impulse and emotion. I thought, "If the stars could dance and sing so beautifully, it truly must be because they feel it is the only thing they must be doing. It is the action they know will bring them the greatest emotion, even if it makes them heartbroken at least they are feeling the emotion intended for them." 

Well.

I do think deeply even if everyone else is not doing just so.

But I've always marveled at the idea that cemeteries are scary. When every Halloween would come around it almost angered me that graveyards were made spooky and demonic and dark. They are such the opposite to me. I find cemeteries comforting in knowing that all these souls are at peace even if they never knew such a feeling on this earth. The sea of headstones and statues and flowers left by a soul that's journeyed on, it is an elegiac painting of what love truly is. I know that every soul is real. I know that they meet their marvelous and all-loving Maker when they die and so it does not scare me to see all of those souls at peace in that element. 

So the stars, they bring a sort of happy-sadness, something my sister Rachel and I talk about endlessly. I sometimes call it "necessary sadness" or "elegiac pleasure", but it is difficult to name because it's something that is complex in its own idea. How could one feel happiness and sorrow at once? Their very names defy each other. But to me, it's a type of emotion that doesn't look sad on the outside but is very personal and reaching on the inside. It's as if you lose a loved one and you hear their favorite song on the radio or you stumble into their favorite shop without realizing it and though they're both acts of "chance" you know it was something meant for you. You know it means something and so how could you be sad when you know it makes you happy the universe or God is thinking of you? I used to run from songs that made me sad because at first, it felt wrong to me to be violating old memories or feelings--they seemed to have no right in my life in that random moment. But, by bravely getting through that emotional barrier, I've learned that feeling sad isn't wrong. I learned that feeling happiness all the time isn't right either. There must always be a balance of letting go and feeling things as they really are. You must do the latter in order for the former to be at ease. It is a cycle that can be quite exquisitely beautiful if you let it. There is a certain power in owning your own feelings, but letting nature course their depth and time of place. We are often told to hide your feelings if they are not in the proper place or setting--but how on earth could that be normal if emotions themselves are not beings of time tables or hours or even time at all? If we look closer we realize that time is merely an invention for living beings, most especially humans, so how could it possibly apply to anything apart from that? Broken hearts do not heal from time they heal from allowing your emotions to become real and then by letting go of them. Happiness is not from an element of time but from people or your dog or a painting. It comes from finding a crumbled love note in the street or a red balloon floating carelessly through the sky. Just as happiness, broken hearts and sadness are not elements of time emotions are the same. We are never pained by time. We are pained by experiences. 

As I looked up at those glittering stars it was remarkable to feel that "happy-sadness" of them once being there, still and solid in the sky and then so suddenly gone in a matter of a heartbeat. How lovely it would be to be so beautiful, so sure of your small purpose in this life, even if it lasted only a moment. 

Sometimes--all the time--I see moments or people through my day that remind me of that small verity. The autumn wind full of spices will jostle through my hair and whisper a sonnet of sadness only I could understand. Or a book long forsaken by someone else will become a dear love of mine because we somehow found each other. I'll hear a thousand songs that speak my name in every word. A smell. A shoe. An old friend. I see God in everything, I hear His voice in that autumn wind and look into His lovely eyes when I find a new companion (a book) or gaze heavily into the glittering stars. 

I know that when I look into those stars I see Him because it is as if those stars are telling me exactly how wonderful my life is and is still going to be and so I dream. I dream of autumn breezes and forsaken books. I dream of cobblestone England and quiet misunderstood cathedrals yet to be discovered. 

I love the stars, my friends. They've always understood.

I can hardly tell you how incredible the sky looks just before dawn. They say that's when you can see stars the best, but to me every moment with them in view is perfect. But through the waves of exhaustion for everyone else, through their small napping with heavy breaths and quick dreams of the morning, I was there looking at the stars. Never once through that night did my eyes leave the stars, my friends. 

So night slipped into morning and morning collapsed into day and as I've learned throughout this interesting summer--Robert Frost said it best:

"Nature's first green is gold, 

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour. 

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank in grief.

So dawn goes down to day, 

Nothing gold can stay."

-k.p.b.

(Post Script: And what do you know--that poem was resting in my pocking this whole time, written by my own hand. How lovely. And...it's a Tuesday.)

Audible Pleasure: (It helps when you're writing)

 La valse d'Amélie - Version orchestre – Yann Tiersen

Biking – Peter Salem

Ratatouille Main Theme - Score – Michael Giacchino
Neville's Waltz (From "Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire") – The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, James Fitzpatrick
La Valse de L'Amour – Patrick Doyle
Family Theme Waltz – Sondre Lerche
Chocolat: Main Titles – Rachel Portman

Crying in the Chapel

"Crying In The Chapel" by: Orioles

You saw me crying in the chapel
The tears I shed were tears of joy
I know the meaning of contentment
I am happy with the Lord

Just a plain and simple chapel
Where all good people go to pray
I prayed the Lord that I'll grow stronger
As I live from day to day

I searched and I searched but I couldn't find
No way on earth to find peace of mind

Now, I'm happy in the chapel
Where people are of one accord
Yes, we gather in the chapel
Just to sing and praise the Lord

You'll search and you'll search but you'll never find
No way on earth to find peace of mind

Take your troubles to the chapel
Get down on your knees and pray
Then your burdens will be lighter
And you'll surely find a way