Crawl to Me

Time is running out, I can feel it in the way the cold air bites at my bare throat. As I walk around the lake for the thousandth time since I discovered it years ago far away off in the hills, the colors of the trees change right before my eyes. Flashes spark in my mind like flecks of flames burning; hell tongues of spiritual ritual.

The smell of damp earth, rotting leaves, firesmoke. Season of shadows which eclipse the light I once held so close. Inside of me I can feel the separation. It can happen even as it appears invisible to the naked eyes of others. I long for my secrets to be revealed if only for the intimate satisfaction of release.

But more than that, I want to keep them for myself. What is a woman without her mystery, without the dark depths of what she may or may not choose to invite you into. We say we want freedom but most of us are too weak, too terrified, to handle that in full. To be stripped of all boundaries, directions, structures or instructions.

We do not want the free fall of total limitlessness. The human mind grasps and grips for something to steady itself. Something to hold on to, to press itself against. I have had vertigo on and off for years. It’s a trippy thing. You feel like you are tipping over, as though the ground has slanted suddenly beneath you. I once set foot out of bed and fell clear into the wall. Had to crawl on the floor to feel safe enough to move.

It is a time of transformation. I do not know if we are able to choose this for ourselves. Are we all called to transform? Called by what or whom? Why now? Why not never? To be ‘re-born’ as something new is in truth to be more of what you already are. I light up a cigarette and pull my hood over my head as the wind picks up and dark clouds roll in over the open water. Mirrored sky. Gray on gray on looking-glass.

There are nights we spend alone and never speak about because no one ever asks. To see and be seen are frighteningly powerful endeavors. Most won’t dare. The hands tremble as they reach, the stomach quivers and the sex aches with need, seemingly inexplicable. The trouble is the poet’s soul is different. We suckle the flesh of the living word, we hang upside down suspended. Vampirish. Sirens. Sign posts. We invert the world and the way it sees – not so that we can be free but so that we can be sure we are true to our own vision.

“What a lot of us are seeking is the power to choose what rules us. Our world is composed of dominant and submissive dynamics. Some are consensual and chosen while most are inherited through blood, institution, or country. Why do we play this game of cat and mouse?” (Penelope Dario, editor in chief of petitmort.mag)

There are two definitions of the word true. One is an adjective: in accordance with fact or reality. The other is a verb: to bring into the exact shape, alignment, or position required.

They say the truth will set you free. But I think that is a bit misleading, or at least flat. What being true really does is it allows you to finally choose for yourself what you know – with all of your innermost instruments, sensations and intuitions – aligns you with the whole of who you are: body, mind, heart and soul.

As the rain begins to fall, mist moves in. In a far off corner of the lake where it curves its banks against the mud and trees, a gigantic bird opens its wide wet wings, lifts from the surface and takes flight. Ghostly white, silently soaring, serene.