Embers

She said she'd remember tonight years from now.  How they sat under the stars in the backyard.  On an unusually warm October night.  Watching the northern lights glow green hues across the sky and listening to the dry spruce crackle and pop as it burnt to embers.

She thought about those souls that wander the earth, unloved.  Yet in her own life, love abounded.  A wellspring without beginning or end.   And tonight her heart felt like it was radiating right out of her chest.  Humming with the fervor of the universe and humbled by such a noble gift.

Reflection.

She said I was well past being a coward.  In fact, she emphatically told me to drop that kind of language completely.  Because I know how to be strong.  And I know how to move in the world, and take care of myself without sacrificing it all away.

So I took myself to the bathroom mirror, got up good and close and told myself that I was ready.  And it really felt like I was getting somewhere!

Pose of Possibility

She said I was already breathing it in, that's how close it is.  That if I paid attention I could already feel it in my muscles, a subtle soreness from working them out to fatigue.  "Go back to down dog" she said, "let the energy move from the ground right up through your hands and feet at the same time... And for God sakes, keep your head below your heart and stop over thinking it so much!"

Recesses

She said that we could be many different things.  And we should.  Sometimes these things need to be experienced separately and at other times simultaneously.  Constantly expanding outward and strengthening inward.  But you must not limit yourself.  You must allow these things access to your soul with the same effortlessness as air rushes in your lungs and blood pumps through your heart.  Soon you will learn to not think so much about it all.  You'll just allow yourself to be and go with all that the soul is journeying through and toward.

She said there was still the faint aroma of fear, like a pheromone, but at least it was no longer stinking the place up or inviting the wrong kind of company in for an extended stay.  It was weakening rapidly, these things are born with a half life you know, so they diminish quickly but take a lifetime to erode in entirety.

Focus, she said on moving the joy of the adventure into the recesses of your mind, let it saturate all states of your consciousness.

Flow

She said things were starting to flow.  Move along.  Which was strange, given that winter seemed to be cat-calling from the north.  Letting everyone know that it was close on their heels.  Trying to make them all shake and shiver with the fear of what might be coming down the pipe.

But she told me to pay no mind to all of that.  To keep the summer's sun in my heart.  It would be more than enough to keep things moving freely.  With the fluidity of maple sap in spring.

Backdoor.

She said life should be full of good things.  Just good things.  So let those other bits go.  Open the back door so they can escape without making a scene or alerting the neighbors.  Soon you'll be able to close the screen door, cause all that's left with be so small they'll float right through the screen.

Mutations

I've decided that I'm going to keep loving you anyway.  Even though it is changing.  And perhaps by saying those words last week, and you know which ones I mean, I severed all that may have been future-possible.

But the future is both a short and long ways off.  And like all futures, takes turns that we never expect.  And life is not really full of mistakes and miscalculations ~ but rather opportunities to be beautiful in different ways.  Beautiful in pain and transfiguration.  Beautiful in joy and opening the heart to things that most of us are afraid to dream about or imagine.

So even though I'm transfiguring.  Morphing into shapes that hurt my body and mind and squeeze my heart in previously unimagined ways.  And make me doubt a sunny summer's worth of dreaming... I'm going to keep my heart open.  To you.

But also to the rest of it.