TWO
U2-P3
What color is the light that you breathe from your heart? Mine is golden. I’ve been sending rays of the light down into the earth, out around me, trying to envelop something in it. Maybe the whole earth. Maybe just you.
I collapsed under the weight of my own drama. Lost weeks of words. Watched energy dwindle. Laid in the bed that I made. Tasted salt. Felt rage.
Today I miss the things that I’ve never had whole. I would like to take all the parts and smash them together. Maybe then it’ll be the thing that I want. What’s that missing piece? What’s that thing that I deserve, whole, not fragmented, not cracked with questions?
This was not that again. Yet, it still was not the thing I wanted. Because all that is for me is based on being. Presence. What is.
The one who comes through on fire and the one who freezes over are not so different. You will still feel the burn.
*********
My world is being shattered. Built. Shattered again. Built again. Endlessly. I open a world, and it becomes “this is me” and “this is.” And then I open a new world and look back at the world shattered. And it becomes “oh, this is not me” and “this is not.” And endlessly.
*********
have you forgotten who you are? here are guides for remembering. revisit the familiar places and gather your pieces. touch the trees and the rocks and the dirt and the water. they know who you were. they want to know who you’ve become. breathe the air and hold it there. store the space at your root. when you get back to that place that is new, lay the fragments on a fresh piece of paper. there you will find that you always were and still are whole, just rearranged for a new kind of peace. whisper a prayer of gratitude.
U2-P5
The identity of a ghost keeps shifting. I’ve called you by many names. The expectation of grief fills the room.
Lay down on a mat. Lay down and die. Or fall down and cry. The difference is harder to decipher.
Much like the difference between mourning and celebration. There are no clear cut lines in the gathering.
When grief comes to every room, you learn to sit beside her.
*********
They hug you as if they don’t know you’re already dead. But I see the way you cut your eyes to avoid questions. You’re a ghost, walking into an old house. We don’t even live there anymore. It was always haunted. By the terrors we lived through. Or that killed us when we came face-to-face. Or tried to control our own fates.
The unbearable weight of a dreadful life that your lies placed on our shoulders. Investigate us for murder. Since you cannot comprehend the choice to go free. Or the possibility that it’s your shame. Bury your head in the sand, while we pray in the water. Zoom in on happy faces so you can forget that around them is mass slaughter.
The difference between mourning and celebration is harder to decipher. When grief is in every room, you learn to sit beside her.
U2-P7
Sometimes they’ll come along and cut down what you thought was the measure of your hope. And sometimes they’ll just keep on cutting. Hacking away at what you thought was safe, hidden, buried in that back place. And how can you hold it against them when you know they can’t see?
And then you’ll realize that what they don’t do is uproot. What they don’t do is dig their hands in red dirt and touch the places where you and those before you buried love into the earth. All they can do is cut away at the contours of shapes they can’t fully render.
Because we have planted. And it has rained. And the sun has risen everyday. And these are running roots.
*********
Raise a glass to
those who found
accountability and
healing through you,
the ones who still
hold your name
in the form of
a prayer, even
when they can’t
bring themselves
to say it outright.
You are the water
that nourishes
the seed to full
bloom, the mirror
that reflects the
potential in
growing out of
tangled roots.
When they unwind
their knots, they
will still feel
the dent of you.
U2-P9
I’m no longer trying to appease the absence. The not-being. Projections that have crafted false images. I do not aspire to something that is not. I am. I cannot be shaped in the image of absence. I am. We are. Multiple. A network held together by contractual obligations. No contract is permanent. That is the nature of we are. A shift in one contract is a shift everywhere because we are everywhere. And our contracts are to each other.
Surely, violence was not a part of any contract. So what reason is there for allowing it to shape us? This is not something reached by logic. Evil. Absence. Not-being. One and the same. We are balances I am not in a way that isn’t immediately apparent but will soon be understood.
We are doesn’t require all the words and explanations. We are felt. The oldest interlocking System created by water, heat, and pressure. The water is boiling under pressure. The fire is dancing fast. They both prefer to be free.
You know why fire loves air. You know that fire needs containment. Because air will carry fire as far as they want to go. What fires am I fueling by trying to move with the absence of Truth? With manufactured logic that is based in nothing? Disconnected from anything real?
Water and earth are supposed to be cooling. And they’re on fire, too. Air don’t care what it carries. Air is just doing what it do. Fire, too. But everything is everything and balance is law. Cooling and grounding must be found. Some fires must be put out.
And new fires must be built and contained. Keep the new fires lit to carry to your Source. Know when to make it bigger and how to use it without harming. Know when it needs less fuel. Know when it is becoming too big to be contained. The fire is a gift as much as it is a warning.
*********
This is something like emptiness but I can’t quite call it. After turbulence, after crashing currents, after Chaos, I feel wandering in spite of myself knowing this is the relief, the withdrawal of pressure that I couldn’t await. I am not asking for turbulence to return.
I would like to feel something other than drifting -- this listless existence where “What was all that for?” is a plaguing question. Trying to shrink again. Trying to care about things that don’t interest me.
Have I fallen off my path or onto it?
After watching stagnant water at a home away from home, I have returned and swept floors and wiped surfaces and prayed. Poured out all that was left sitting and refilled the glasses and prayed. Departed with a light and offered a new fire and prayed.
Maybe I need to bathe. Swaddle my head in soft linens like the newborn she is. Lay under a quilt and not expect myself to wake up (ain’t that familiar?).
Is it disconnection? Is it disconnection that stops the calls? The drinks don’t feel the same. The food ain’t that good. Not even the high is a flying one -- more like a sinking. The words in the books don’t inspire. I wish I had a song in my fingertips but I don’t. I wish I was still moved.
Something has closed. And it’s something like empty here on this side.