Sunday, February 13, 2022

She who welcomes

Not loud, just persistent.  Repeated, rhythmic even.  Knocking at the door for months or maybe even years, they all feel the same now.  I don’t believe in time anymore, other than to meet a friend for coffee.  We agree on a moment and call it a time. But using it to pace and measure moments of my life? Befores and afters and whens seem like dangerous concepts meant to keep me on a track that doesn’t exist unless I play along.  

Back to the knocking of the uninvited intruder outside. What will I find, weariness, when I let you in as a welcomed traveler deserving of minimally civilized hospitality?  As opposed to ignoring your pleas for food and water at my door?   

Your stay is more brief than I expected, you breeze through like a draft when I thought surely you would be the worst kind of squatter, impossible to dislodge. I feel the change in decor though, even as you leave.  This is a home where weariness can find shelter, however brief.  There’s now a new painting in my living room I’ve never seen before but now love. It is deep blues and night skies and a calm I thought impossible if you were in my life.  I felt my bones give in while you were here, I thought it meant I would collapse.  It did not.  It meant I could stop wearing the heavy coat of she-who-shall-never-be-weary.   Instead, those bones remembered they’re a living, responsive system of collagen and mineral crystals that adapt to context and load.   They adapted to the relief of one less retaining wall to hold up. 


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