There Was A Little Girl. Maybe She Was In Me; Maybe She Was Me.

Greedy are the trees

"Haven't you ever seen it?" She asked me.

"Gnarled roots pale as bone crawling their way through the underbrush. Pushing aside new green ferns and beds of decaying leaves. Each root peaking for long lengths from the damp dirt. Anchored maybe by the earth or maybe by thorny vines, sharp and thick with red-tipped spines. This is the work of the trees." She whispers this all to me in a conspiring way.

"You'll see them reaching with knothole fists towards the waters edge. Thirsty for what the spring has to offer; as if the ground isn't soft with it already." She pauses smile turned sharp and condescending in the way a mother's does when sharing stories of her child's mischief.

"Greedy things"

Colors under my skin

There's violet and lavender and lilac.

Like deep bruising, like sleepless night, like cold anemic skin.

It hurts somewhere between the cold defeat of blue and the hot anger of red.

But it's comforting too, like acceptance; acknowledgment; the first step to getting better.

And there's yellows too

Marigold and dandelion and polished bronze.

It's like warm sunshine, like soft flower petals, like sturdy statues.

It's encouraging; hotter and more pure than red but never as close as the color of life.

But it's intimidating too; like the mythical idea of being okay.

It took me a long time after you were gone to realize everything I was gonna get from you I had already gotten.

I know it's selfish but all I want is more of you.

That sobering moment when you are brushed by death. Only by proxy; a tragedy twice removed.

But you see different, taste different, feel different.

Confronted by the fragile state that is humanity. When death is more than just mortality and morbidity.

Floating without even grief to hold your heart. Unbroken and unsure.

Stop telling me I have to be pure, to be worth it.

I have always been small. I have always been little and quiet and unseen. I have always done what I'm supposed to do. I have always been smart and i have always been kind. I have always obeyed.

And where has that brought me? Past the edge of childhood and into an adult's life. But I only know how to speak when spoken to, and to do what I'm told. I have never made a decision for myself that hasn't failed spectacularly.

I cannot work and I cannot drive. Anything else i may do is too expensive. So I do nothing.

All my life I've done nothing; to reduce my burden on my parents. But now I am a burden because I do nothing.

Many times people treat enlightenment like a concrete state. Like once they reach it they are above the world, impervious to it. Unaffected by change and time.

But its quite the opposite. Those who are truly in tune with the earth find that change us the only constant. They move with the tide. Sway with the breeze. Grow with the trees.

To reach your most natural state is to be in tune with what is inside you as you are with what is around you. To cut away your earthly ties only brings you farther from the mother.

To be connected with the ever raging fire of your soul is as important as being swept away in the tides of time. Always present, ever in motion.

Matter cannot be created or destroyed.

that's the rule of the universe.

You've always existed in some way.

and no matter how many times you get blown apart;

The gravity of your atoms will drag you back together.

Tearing your self apart is futile.

It's nuclear fission.

You only salt the earth in your despair.

Tear open the black hole just for the gravity well to drag you under.

The only escape is expansion.

I want to know what you hold close when your feeling empty

I want to know what you claw together and stuff into your empty chest like cotton in a corpse.

When your numb and dead and there's nothing left what keeps your shape?

Is it worth it, This thing your clinging to?

Does it make you more human? Does it break the numbness?

When every piece of you is dead and gone what should I expect?

I was told I needed to learn to sit with my grief. to hold its hand and mother it. to allow it to exist within me.

But I don't think I can mother anything, not even myself. I sit beside my grief, hand in hand. We're staring at each other. both wondering why we're here.