Pilgrimage

I have experienced
the peace
that comes from
coming home
to myself
and the universe.

This sense
of homecoming
is
beautiful
and
there is a
softness wonderment joy
in my throat
at the sight
of every little thing
and it
takes
my breath away
just to
be,
to
breathe,
to
exist.

It is as though
every blood bone nerve breath
in my body
is aligned
perfectly,
rightly,
truly.

It has
left me now
and I am
lost,
uncertain,
bones and blood and breath and nerve
subtly misaligned.

But I am
beyond blessed
to have
stepped into
the heart of peace.

I miss it
like I
miss
my own heart.

I
seek it
again.

And so
I begin
my journey
anew.

The home I carry within me

the disease of the lost self
i have travelled far and left my home behind
i do not trust you anymore

Three accusations are brought before me.
I oveturn them all.

The journey
began
four years ago.
Let me
return
back to the start.

Four years ago,
I became aware
for the first time
of the disease
that ate
away at my roots
like black rot.

That year,
I set out
on a pilgrimage
that would span
years,
not knowing
when
I would see
my home again,
not knowing
where
I would travel to.

I dragged
my kicking
and
screaming
and
hating
self
out of the grave
I’d lain content in
and
began
the arduous toiling voyage
towards
the republic of heaven.

Three years ago,
I realized
I relentlessly
tried to build
my home
within people,
when, really,
I must
learn
to carry
my home
within myself.

Two years ago
I watched
the land
I loved;
the land
of my
hopes,
dreams,
and beliefs
fall
into
ashes
and
heartbreak.
The work
to find
and build
the republic of heaven
with my own hands
became evermore urgent.
Hope
cannot
be found
without,
pinned
to a
distant land.
It is
the invincible summer
that sings
within.

This very same year,
I learnt
that
mostly,
I want to be kind.

A year ago,
I realized
I must
learn
to swim
in the ocean
that is society.
And
I taught myself
so well
that I learned
to thrill at
the sight
of the
vast, glittering, terrifying
blue.

The search
started to turn
inward.
I stopped
traversing lands
and instead
traversed deep
within
myself.

A year ago,
I learnt
to listen
without
bearing pain.
This
is not
and will never be
a home.
Do not
carry it
like it is one.

Two months ago,
I realized
I
must
tell myself
a different narrative
if I am
to live.
I am an addict.
I am a survivor.

A month ago,
I realized
I
mistook
my humanity
for my ugliest
shame.

Four weeks ago,
I made
and remade
and remade
the choice
to
be kind
to myself.
For do I not
want, mostly,
to be kind?

Three weeks ago,
I realized
I did not
know myself
at all.
And I
would like to.

Two weeks ago,
I learnt
to allow myself
to be seen
and to bare
my heart
again
and again
and again.
It gets easier.
I learnt
to stand in the fire
shaking
but
upright.

A week ago,
I realized
I
did not
trust myself.
And, so,
I placed trust
like a mantle
around my shoulders,
and it was
so
warming
during the winter.

A week ago,
I
saw myself
with clear
and unclouded eyes.
I saw the shape
in the mirror
and how
I recognized her,
and how
I understood her.

A week ago,
I
came home
to myself
and felt
for the first time
the joy
of homecoming.

And thus,
my four-year journey
has finally come to an end.

I have travelled long and far and wide,
and I have lived in the fire, trembling, alone, agonized,
and I have lost myself to the winter of self-hatred,
and I have forged a new phoenix-self out of the ashes of my bitterness and grief and fear,
and I have learnt to build a home within myself,
and I have finally
found
the self
that I
have lost.

And I have been Persephone, toiling away below the earth,
unsure if she would see the light of spring again,
but, still, she persisted.

And I am Persephone, returned to spring,
and a part of the beauty and aliveness of the world again.
And I look back now
and I
cherish
every single step I took,
every flaying I endured,
every peace I felt,
and every inch I grew.

For I have a home now.
And there is not much to be afraid of anymore.

The tale of peace.

“Patience” is what the dial points to now.

The winter that passed was the most excruciating winter endured, to date. It was bone-chilling and skin-flaying. It was exposed heart and blood and nerve. It was icy black water seeping in through the door and the only signs of the house’s occupants are the drowning air bubbles escaping to freedom the way their owners could not.

But the mistress of the land and the owner of the house is home again and and she has begun to spring clean and the floors are gleaming white and clean and the books are no longer toppled over but upright and stacked and the curtains are thrown back and light is reaching in with tentative fingers.

The demons, unheard winter-long, clamor and rouse and bang heavy fists on her door and speak in garbled tongue but she opens her home and offers patience like tea and puts into language every single unintelligible sound and unuttered howl. And they leave, quiet, sated, docile as lambs.

And the people knock and knock and bring complaints and problems and little disasters, and she opens her home again and offers them patience like tea and untangles their messy yarn-balls of problems and offers them new yarn.

And the garden dares to grow again. Shoots pluck up their courage and push through the soil to take a peek and flowers venture, bold as you please, to put out their skirts and begin to unfurl again and the trees, the old, mighty sentinels whose roots spread across the entire land and hold it together in their unwavering, steadfast, grasp, stretch toward the sun again and groan in relief after a winter’s worth of making themselves small.

How good it is to be home.

After the fire

During the fire,
I thought
I lost
everything;
my home,
myself,
my body,
my world.

Worst –
I thought
it was
my finger
that struck
the match.

How then
is my home
upright,
unsinged,
un-devastated?

How then
do I find
in my hands
dear little shoots
unearthed
by the fire?

How then
do I find myself
bearing
a winter’s worth
of burn-scars,
thick
and white
and roped,
but
how
do
these scars
breathe and beat with stars,
and sing
of a soldier’s courage?

I am
come home
to myself,
and I may
never know
if I struck
the match,
and I may
never know
the reason
the fire
resisted
every dousing burst
of water –

but
I survived,
and I grew,
and I came back
more.

Restoration.

I rest against myself, back to spine, enveloped. I had forgotten how it feels like to be home, with patience my harbor; with patience my guardian, with patience the mighty oak spreading like protection across this land and holding it together.

As spring takes tremulous step after step forward in the aftermath of the bone-flaying winter, my thoughts are once again green growing things and, oh, how I have missed this sound.

My lantern-scythe has returned firmly to my hand and how I have missed the way it lit every step before me and cut a light-lined clear and gut-certain path. The word-wounds it carved into me are scabbing and I offer myself apologies like bandages and salves like understanding: I am sorry for the violence I inflicted onto you. I wait now. I am almost whole. I wait to become a spirit of fire again.

I am rooted in the earth. I tune in to this sensory world that I love, this slow and patient world in which I thrive, this humble world in which I always return to, and these are the salves I have to offer:

May my hands always be open and may compassion-empathy fly like doves into the world and return with knowledge and love.

May I grow ever more adept at using my scythe-light; may I understand the times to scythe and cut and carve, and the times to light the dark so I may find the next pebbled step beneath my feet.

May I rekindle the fire within. May I be, a being of flame and earth and air: carefree as a spark, rooted as an oak, soft as air.

May I remember: be patient. you are still growing.

Notes on gratitude 

This morning, I put my hand out into the sunlight. I watched the way the golden light touched my hand with the gentlest of fingers and I wonder at the softness in my throat. I looked around me and the film-haze has finally lifted from my eyes and I see again with clarity and I am taken aback by the world my feet are planted in. I had forgotten that the way the sunlight sets trees ablaze with light and turns leaves golden-green takes my breath away.

Last week, I ate dark indigo blueberries and big and bright oranges. I tasted the wondrous blueberry sweetness and the marvellous zesty orangeness that flood my tongue and I looked at the way indigo-purple looks against lively orange I think these may be my favorite colors.

Today, my mind lies tranquil like a still, deep mirror-pool reflecting the clear summer sky, and thoughts drop in like pebbles and cause gentle ripple-wave after ripple-wave.

Anger. 
n. 

1) Outletless because where does the screaming hurling abuse go, where do I throw every small object within my grasp to like a raging wife in a serial drama, who am I supposed to anger towards? If I split myself into two to indulge in a screeching tantrum-fest, perhaps this ennui-heavy anger will finally leave me. She is dripping with anger and she wants to accuse, “You ruin everything!”

2) Impatience. A switch has been flipped and instead of the dial pointing at “kindness”, it now points at “impatience” because when are you going to get your act together, when are you going to be less sensitive, when are you going to become normal?

3) Apathy because a) I am sick and tired of you the way an exhausted mother has had enough of her baby’s ever constant tearing wails and howls and demands for more when all she wishes for is a little magic sliver of peace, b) what does it even matter if I am angry at you, what is even the point anymore, why should I care when all I want is for you to –

4) Suffer and I want to kick you when you are down and I do not think you deserve any help because someone who cannot help themselves deserves only to suffer and vindictive, vicious pleasure satiates me like blood filling a wound with every suffering I act out on you. I just want to see how long you will wallow and suffer like a pig in mud.

5) Blame. Do you know how it feels to have a judge, jury and executioner scrutinize and measure and pore over your every action, word and feeling, eager to pounce upon the tiniest of cracks, condemnation and finality ringing, resounding as a bell, to declare that you are: not enough. You have been judged and found wanting but why must you be perfect when you are fearfully and wonderfully made? But why must you blame me when it –

6) Hurts so much because I am never enough, nothing I do ever fills the gaping chasm between me and every other person, and every day, the abyss of not-enough widens, and every day, I think, I cannot do it. Why do you blame and blame and blame me and place condemnation like a crown of thorns on my head. I am trying! I am doing my best, why is that not enough, when will that be enough? Is it not heartbreaking enough that I cannot even see every hill that I conquered because you only push me further and force me to more?

7) Grief. Perhaps this grief is noise-to-your-ears and not tears-in-your-throat. I am trying to listen to you even as you only lash me with a whip. I am trying to understand you even as you bend me further and further out of shape until my internal organs are compressed into nothing. I carve space from my own heart to build you an audience chamber because I do not want to miss a word that you are saying — help me, what are the words swallowed by the sound of the fire?

7.1) Self-protection. Perhaps they are:

a) I am angry at you because I am tired of the cold chill of powerlessness and anger is warming.

b) I am angry at you because I am sick of the ten-tonne chain-weights of misery tied to each ankle, leaving me gasping desperately for breath.

c) I am angry at you because I do not trust you anymore. You are a ship with a faulty rudder and a wavering compass. You are a failing North Star. Months were spent clinging to breath and life in the storm-ridden sea and your promise-certainty echoes emptily — there is nary a glimpse of land. You are a stumbling captain who has led me into the sea of failure again and again and I do not trust you anymore.

d) I am angry at you because I am standing in a fog, confused and lost and I am so unmoored I stand and stare at nothing for a long, long, long time trying to regain my bearings and dredge up another eking of grit to try and try again and this hazy helplessness frightens me and this soul-deep exhaustion numbs me. I stand in a fog-shrouded land and every thought is a buried landmine underneath my feet waiting to happen into explosion. I stand in a fog-shrouded land and there is no end in sight and I walk and walk and walk to see the same featureless haze and I live in this fog and pain and fear for so long that I pray it has not seeped into me and stained my insides indelibly. I stand in a fog-shrouded land and I lend all my concentration to listening to you and I hear your frantic voice correcting and measuring and evaluating me and I understand –

8) Compassion.

a) You are an impulse to heaven and you are forcing twisted shape after shape after shape upon me because you – I – we – are scared and you will not go into the stormy night resigned. You – I – we – fear every apocalyptic glance and world-ending word and death-bringing tone and you believe that this fear can be outrun if we only twist ourselves enough. You – I – we – fear every soul-grinding terror and soul-reducing humiliation and you believe we will never feel like that again if only I am more. So, then, –

b) Rest, dear one. I will walk now with my heart exposed, bravely, nakedly, and let every event write and tattoo and scar itself onto my beating and raw heart. You need not curve ribcage-talons around it anymore. I will now feed my body and mind and soul with breath and I will be a being of air and diffuse every wound and you do not need to frantic over it anymore. I will now enfold myself and you with acceptance and I say now, it is okay, maybe I will always be like this and maybe it will have to be okay. Rest assuredly and calmly because you have toiled above and beyond and I am on a Pilgrim’s journey – I make slow and winding and invisible progress, but I have walked far and left behind my home and this counts for something, surely. Because the most important thing – the sounds lost in the fire – the words I have been searching and searching to say to you are –

c) Trust me. And I will trust you.