A Closing Prayer to Open

Cycles refused and never lived. 

I have always criticized the endless pursuit of Spring and Summer. Creation and full-expression on endless repeat.  That could have been my first clue that I was in my own endless pursuit of Autumn and Winter. Twilight and night, death and dying, mourning and grieving, distilling and hibernating in the cellars of life's offerings my favorite palette.  

Traffic jams on bridges, dead ends, one-way streets going the wrong way, dark alleys, thresholds transformed into endless hallways, hinge moments that rust with immobility. Dust and grime are still gritty under my nails from all my bricklaying and (de)construction work.

So I went to school. Thinking I might learn how to do this better. How to be different. 

I cannot name what I learned, only that it was not that. I can only name what I feel as I stand here, ready to walk deep into the cave I've never visited but unconsciously tried to replicate thousands of times. 

Comfortable warmth surrounds me, a hooded cloak on my shoulders reminding me that I was literally made for this. Hunger and thirst for nourishment I've never had hone my focus forward. Echoes of love, acceptance, and the sound of my name whispered on the lips of so many sisters a soft breeze reminding me that I am not alone, even here. Especially here. Reverence is at my side; this is nothing less than a pilgrimage. An invocation of my own holiness and the desperate hope I will find it.

I did not leave school with empty hands.

My cloak is heavy now, tree sap seeps into the fibers and sings gentle songs of flow in harmony with my lymph.  The steady pulse of drums penetrates its weave, inviting my heart to dance, dance, dance.  Iron runes amplify the chanting wisdom of my bloods, all of them.  Glyphed codex patterns the colors, reflecting moon and star light, inside and out. A mystery shimmers over the fabric, a whispered echoing response to the secrets my womb holds. Shield, sword, bow, and arrows sheathed inside and invisible, offering quiet readiness for necessary predation ever present in my hands.  

As I take my first step, I offer this, my closing prayer. May it open me.

As I sink my feet into the sand of my internal shores, may I embody the truth I have witnessed.  

The ocean welcomes all rivers, as can I.

As I unbury myself from the shallow grave of survival, may I live the truth I have seen.  

Spirals are not labyrinths, unless I make them so. 

As I face the day and all its brightness, may I feel the truth I have known.

The sun also shines for me, no matter how much I exalt the night. 

As I encounter loss and pain, may I cherish the truth I have felt. 

Pyre ashes hold the truth and burden of the past, not I. 

As I experience death in living and life in dying each and every day, may I rejoice in the truth I have received. 

Each sunrise and sunset is a promise kept.

May I be the dignified guardian and reliable witness of the sacred and the wise inherent in each step of every path, starting with my own.

Amen.

Hood up, I follow my gaze with my footsteps, going into the dark again, yes. But not out of habit this time. This time it's to find a different way in, and finally, a way out.  This is not a dead end.  For the first time and always, I go into the dark, guided by the flame that shines through my eyes even when they are closed.

 

L’amante

 Lover, love-her.

Let’s start at the end of this beginning and work our way back.  Back through the fourteen doors between before and after, between you and me. 

When midnight blue and flame orange were the alone and lonely colors of us.  When sunlight was just a bright light and air was just there. 

Dance with me, you said.  Feel what you cannot taste, see, or hear. Let doors be veils we strip away, one by one, their opening an invitation into infinite pleasure, endless seduction. 

I do not say yes, but let my body dance its willingness, snake its way to open. 

Your hair silks along my own, you lay down on me, in me, the weight and weightlessness of you caress me from the inside, feather brush of soft skin on my blood, my bones.  Another subtle body, this one a lover.  Our constellation can no longer be mapped on a flat surface, the texture you’ve brought demands more. And more we shall have. 

Your fingers massage my sinews and my veins, you sing the song my blood knows now is the anthem to life, to being alive and to receiving life.  

Lonely and alone colors run arms wide open into each other, midnight blue of a night sky meets the blaze of a raging fire and dance the perfect night together. 

They whisper love to each other.  They dance and revel and marvel at the beauty they are and that they create in their togetherness. They say silent prayers to the stars they cannot see but know are there. 

May we never again be parted. May we walk and taste this life together.  May we love it all. 

Behind the I

I see you and then ask that me who sees you, who's seeing you?  And her?  I find an endless well of I.

A well, even an endless one, has a bottom, even if the current I isn't blind enough to find it.  

What lies beneath the well?  A river blacker than the darkest night.  Home to everything that becomes nothing because it cannot be seen, it's too dark. Or just dark enough. 

Perhaps all of this, or each part of this, is about extinguishing the lights, one at a time, to arrive in this inky blackness where each thing disappears and becomes both everything and nothing. 

Perhaps that is also true for you, in this life. Unraveling the tangle of power cords to turn off all the artificial lights, the ones that show the parts you think you like, the parts you think make you likeable. Acceptable.

Does the tree next to the streetlight forget it's part of the forest? Does it sing in sweet relief when that light goes out and it is absorbed back into the blackness that is its origin, its creation, and its home?

In my own sweet and brief moments of relief, when the shining light of an I-am-this is put out, may I sink into the ink beneath the well and let myself be written into the darkness, free from a light that would define or identify.  May I find my true sight in the deepest darkness where I can identify nothing, not even parts of me, in a vast forest where my roots touch yours. 

What was

What did I lose when they took you? It felt like it was more than just you. A wise one spoke your voice to me and shared your love for me, your facet of our parting. You told me we were more together, but not less apart. May I learn this math of love and loss.  May I know that I am not less me because you are no longer here in form.  May I remember that your essence is scribed deep inside me and cannot be removed.

The path to losing you was not linear, it was both my losing something and them taking something. No ceremony, no ritual, no honoring of what was, no one to treasure or even use what was taken. For a time, I lost access to parts of me, although maybe that was the plan all along.

This entire lifetime I have danced with form and content. It’s better said in French, forme et fond. Fond as the deepest part, the depths. Form to my south, depths to my north, that is what was written for me.  

A friend offered me a gift recently, the idea that form can be the depths expressing all the way to the surface, rising up to meet the outside world in form. May I honor your absence by embracing my wholeness and enoughness without you here to make it unquestionable.  May I free the she in me who questions it. May our parting be the invitation to allow the depths of completeness to rise to the surface and express as form in movement, not the perfect picture it once was. 

Even if you are with me differently now, I will miss you forever. The more we were together. 

May I offer the honoring that never was, may I find a different kind of more in the loss of you.

I am here for you

The ground vibrates, plates of land slide and crumble, everyone moves, shifted to a new place.

In this land reconfigured, I watch you stand and wonder, confused and still.  You ask, “Then who am I if I am not that one?” You know there is no answer to that question, only ideas that will never be true. Or maybe they’ll be true for a moment, but never accurate.  You ask it anyway, we all do. 

I have no more answers than you, but I do have something to offer. My deepest devotion to what you bring to each moment, forever. 

So let the tears fall and I will drink them all, for they are homeopathic remedies.  My tongue welcomes the salt of your struggles. 

And show me your rage and I will let it burn me, for those flames cleanse and forge.  My skin marvels as it burns and blisters and heals. 

Give me your angst and anguish and I will lap them up, for sour and bitter flavors bring balance and contrast.  My mouth waters for your twists and turns. 

Play your drama and theatrics, I delight in the spectacular spectacle they create, for they whisper to parts within. I have season tickets for all your shows. 

Amplify your deepest pleasure, your most ecstatic jouissance, for your ecstasy is nectar. I could live on its nourishment alone.

More, more, give me more. I will be your greatest lover, I will love it all.

You are not everyone’s medicine, but you are mine. 

The Songs of Grandmothers

No fairy tales or ballads even. Just the music that suits the truth of the words you have to share. 

What don’t we know? Please tell us everything. Not to justify or explain, this is not about those things.  This is about showing us who you have been, the picture of each moment. Not through the lens of a make-it-pretty retelling, but through the voice of the reliable witness. She who sees who she was when it happened and can honor what was, no matter how ugly or beautiful any of it was. 

Grandmothers, who were you when you baked pies and canned vegetables, when you held grand-babies with reverence, when you soothed the tears that others couldn’t?  And then also tell us who were you when you married the predator, when your child died, when you gave your firstborn up, when you beat your child’s thighs with a switch, when you stayed silent to be good, when you taught your daughters how to castrate and flay the men in their lives just as your own grandmother had, when you swallowed your anger and held your tongue, when you lost the ability to stand straight on your own two feet and began to bend like an orchid? Sing us the song of those women that you were.  Strong, weak, lost, terrified, wronged, bitter, angry, joyful, free, afraid, alone, relieved, caring, loving, nurturing, harsh, judgmental, condemning, welcoming. 

Sing us the song of the steps on your path so we can remember that we came from somewhere. We came from a path you were part of. Show us so we can know what we are made of. 

Tell us the truth, tell us everything. We want to know all of it.

If you have already passed and didn’t sing us your song, sing it to us from beyond. We will hear you.  We are listening. 

Please sing us your songs, Grandmothers.

Tell us who you were.