remember me
the eternal flame flickers in the heart
I can hear the current of the air through the rolled r’s of the candle’s wick-tongue. Its melody gently pulls me into cellular memory. My gaze becomes distant and blurred to the world around me, so as to let scenes of the past dance upon the mind stage.
I am snapped back into this body – the one of this twenty-nine year old woman. I am reminded of a recent exchange.
“What makes you feel grounded?” she inquires with that familiar face of suspicion towards my ability to really hear myself.
“When I am engaged with my five senses,” is my knee-jerk response.
“And what about your sixth?”
I smile.
I recall a time when certain knowledge was blasphemy, and to formulate such information into audible words was to sentence oneself to death.
There have been many of these times. Therefore, this moment is familiar.
Death does not always come as a guillotine to the throat.
Sometimes it appears as a silent goodbye.
The casting of an outworn skin.
Of course, we could maintain our grip. We could continue to wear the scratchy suit.
But, either way, we die.
Herein lies profound choice. One that categorizes our Life Story as either contemporary drama or ancient myth.
So, then, do we arrive at death naked and honest? Weightless and welcome?
Or do we arrive with the regret and remorse of all the lives un-lived? All the words unspoken? Stuffed down, bursting at all our seams?
How exhausting, to carry all that weight around. It compounds over time, unless we are in the rhythmic release of it.
Often, the fear of one’s own integrity is the fear of exile. It is ancient – this fear. This fear of rivaling the wild country without the protection and shared responsibility of the tribe.
How will I survive alone?
The other side of the scale asks:
Can I continue to live a lie?
They seesaw ever-so-slightly. They creak with slow friction.
Until finally, there is a zoom out of the focused weight on each pan.
There is a recognition of the perceiver.
Is it me? Is it the goddess weighing with her wings? Is it a bearded man? An orb of light?
The expanse folds into a pinhole, funneling through the heart.
The flickering flame begins to speak, for it knows it can trust this listener.
Remember me.
Yes. 🙏