Frozen

I stumbled on an invisible wall and fell to my knees.

I wail against it with hard fists. But the wall digs deeper into the ground with stony heels- with callous soles- and refuses to budge.

Here in the deep layers of me there is a mountain as course as concrete. My nerves are wrapped in cold resistance.

I can feel along the edges of it, but I cannot pull it down or break it apart. My hands are left covered in flakes of concrete and clay.

Some days I find the smallest crack, and I can peer down into the underbelly of myself- but the path descends down into the dark forever.

Still: I breathe, and I grow into the space.

Finding Myself Again

Is this the place I can find myself again?

No. This is the place where everything I know has crumbled.

And I prayed for it. I pushed open the heavy door of my own transformation. I sought it out myself, against the pull of fate. And I keep each piece of my evolution clamped tight in my fists.

But there is no end to it. Like when I climb long hills in wet forests, waiting for the tree line to open on a high windy crest-

But the trail just keeps unfolding under me. The path goes on endlessly.

In the bay below me a thousand year old fish laughs. His knowledge is effortless.

Everything here is waiting. Waiting for the shift. Holding its breath before the next change.

Everywhere I go I see Gods. But they stand frozen. They do not speak to me.

Everything I find is another message: the white heron in the marsh, the barred owl on the road, the young buck mottled white.

I see them but there no words, no explanations.

Just a quiet challenge. Just a methodical pull towards something deeper.

Every moment, tile by tile, the walls of my ego are stripped bare.

Take away everything I know to be true. Perhaps if I keep letting go, I will finally find where I am meant to be.

I Died Every Day

For a year my body died every day.

Thunder rolled in my chest. My brain stuttered fast.

For a year my tears would not stop. My breath flew away from my chest. Dread circled in my gut like a spiny shark.

For a year my body died every day.

And I was not brave. My spirit fluttered weakly. I cried hot tears as I felt each moment pass- and each moment was my last. Endlessly in a horrifying spiral.

Every breath the final breath. Every second for a year. I said goodbye to the world. I said goodbye to my life.

I could not explain it. I could not put words to it.

Every moment I was dying. Without my deepest concentration I knew my breath would leave forever- my heart would beat into oblivion.

For a year my body died every day. But now I am alive.

So I ask myself: how do I come back from the dead?

How do I haul my soul out of the grave?

The First Love After You

The first love I felt after him-

It was when our eyes coming together told me how deeply I had been broken open and emptied out.

I know because in the moments we move together I can feel my skin tug apart and my chest leak an amber colored syrup like thick sap

And with each muscled contraction of my heart there is a pump of pain- a surge of heat, like i am leaping off a cliff a thousand times.

Yes, I am doing it again.

I flake the dirt off my knees.

Six years of falling. And I have finally reached the ground.

I ache for a wild love. A love where we learn how to share bile. To trade back and forth between our mouths the acid that washes into our throats from the deepest places. Burning our tongues with the sharpness of our stories.

But it will not be you.

Six years I fell. And I’ll fall again.

Here I will be once more, brushing the dirt from my knees. Left back at the beginning. Broken open. Emptied out. Ready again. Until my time folds in on itself.