Simply Scary Perfect

Decades dancing the line

    between

        eternal bliss and emotional setbacks

            two feet pressed into the ground

                and body loosened,

                    tears and fears fall from my past.

It's scary to be here

    but also perfect.

To be fully present 

    is to accept vulnerability.

Anything could happen at any moment.

To stay here

    is to bet everything,

        to bet that right now is fine,

            safe

                and to acknowledge 

                    you can lose it all in an instant.

To feel the groundlessness

    of the moment

        is to

            look loss in the eye

                and pull it close 

                    for an embrace.

To lose it all

    and gain it all

        simultaneously.

Particularly when 

    one feels depleted,

        to be present is

            like walking blindfolded

                off a cliff following

                    only the voice of love.

To distrust and choose 

    the known

        is to throw on

            a layer of chainmail armor

                onto the soul

                    again and again

                        until it's so thick

                            you are 

                                too heavy and constricted

                                    to move forward

                                        and to unstick you must

                                            melt it away with a tear

                                                on each link.

But this moment contains

    all of it.

There isn't really 

    any option for avoiding

        being present,

            only an option to choose 

                to be tense and heavy

                    or simply be 

                         however

                            you're meant to be.

Spring Up

 I feel the loving warmth of spring emptying from the cold war all around me.

With every day of isolation the world lost color but gained detail.

Peoples began to look as if they didn't overlap, fences so tall and walls so narrow they blotted out the sky.

Every time someone found out I wasn't like them their wall got taller.

Until one day I realized I could hold my breath and dig down and make a tunnel out into the unknown beyond walls.

From there I looked back and realized there were no walls.

Humans fabricated fictional fortresses in their minds made of reflective ice.

Very few seemed to realize the walls would melt if they touched the ground.

So I walked alone, until I realized there was no alone unless I feared sight.

For once I saw myself and sat formed of flesh.

I take in all of time through my nose and out through my mouth.

My cells warmly embrace their forever friends.

I realized I was in fact a mirror and a projector.

The world around me penetrated my thin skin.

I felt all of the joy and the pain and the love and the suffering.

I melted out into the universe just as the star reflected that light back.

With each crunch of leaves below my feet I released a chirp of a bird, the thunder of a running bear, the whisper of the wind, the typewriting hum of rain and the rainbow emanating from in my eyes.

Once I allowed all of this in I fertilized the soil with the dust I shook from my heart and watered the wildflowers with the memories I poured from my eyes.

Today I feel the flowers rising beneath my feet, caressing my soul and smiling "what's next" at me. I see the human walls lowering and one by one I hold their hands and ask if they're ready to see yet. And we walk together again for the first time.