Forgive my lack of clarity.
My memories are scattered.
Reorienting in the center.
This new body is tell waking up.
Fighting off the dream world.
I can’t tell if I’m tethered to this world
Or the next.
Or if someone else is dying.
Bear with me…
I remember…
I remember that I have wisteria in my veins.
Crawling up my bones.
Choking on the vines.
I remember that I let her go on too long.
That’s the funny thing about wisteria.
It’s mesmerizing the way it winds and climbs,
But if you don’t tend to it.
She will destroy you.
The trees…
The foundations…
She will lovingly crack your bones…
I don’t want to remember this part!
I don’t want to remember!
I don’t want to remember that I prayed for this.
I prayed for this!
I prayed to be broken!
I prayed to be broken and put back together by a loving God.
And I prayed and I wept,
While I watched everyone else be healed but me,
While I strangled on flowers that smelled like death,
And I’d never smelled anything sweeter.
And I prayed they would take me.
I begged them to take me.
I begged them to crush me and turn me into dust!
Don’t they know that’s what they’re praying for?
When they pray that I’ll be “better”?
When they pray that I’ll be healed?
At least by their God.
Don’t they know that their healing is my death mask?
A beautiful, loveless, lifeless mask.
That peels back my skin, tortures my mind, and gouges out the light in my eyes.
What kind of a God were we praying to?
That this is what He requires of me to be healed?
Why is my destruction necessary for my redemption?
I can feel Wisteria in my veins.
I can feel her dying this time.
I know that it’s her this time.
It’s not me this time.
I’m sorry that I can’t be more clear.
I’m still waking up.
This body is still waking up.
What a strange sensation,
To feel a part of you dying while you’re still alive.
What a strange sensation for part of you to feel like someone else.
Maybe she was someone else.
I can’t explain the relief that I feel to let her go.
I can’t explain the peace that I feel,
To give myself back to the dust,
On my own terms this time.
That’s just it.
My past life, Wisteria’s life, is dust.
That life caught fire and returned to the durst from which it came…
But the rain came just as it always does
Cleansing tears and eternal life cycle.
It reminds me that this body is seventy percent water
Intimately tied to planer just the same
That will always come to claim it’s own.
Wash me away and birth me again.
When I still prayed to a god they taught me about baptism.
How the water washes away your sin.
How you die when they lay you down.
How you are reborn when they raise you up.
While Wisteria turns to dust,
I return myself to the water, still on my own terms.
I watch my life in the sunlight that dances on the surface
Let the current take her remains as my tears and the Earth’s flow by.
Grieving…
Lost time
Self-loathing
The beautiful possibilities choked off before they could take root
The parts of myself that I sacrificed in the name of redemption.
And the water whispers love.
I am not sin.
I am holy.
I am sacred.
I am made of the stuff of the Earth and the universe.
No forgiveness, no redemption is necessary.
Only the washing away of the remains of the beautiful mask I wore.
Only the washing away of self-destruction and prayers for mercy.
And when I emerge I hope the water in my veins will whisper love to me
Until I can believe it in every cell…
Grieving Landscapes 