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.