V. Favorite
Some dreams arrive by day, and seep in through your roots by night | Between Dreams
When you curled yourself into the shape of my body, your bones pressing against mine, I wondered what took you so long.
You did it so carefully, as if your tiny frame could hurt me.
It was cold that day, but in the heat of the sun you unbuttoned your jacket down to your waist. The wind made your hairs stand and the surface of the lake rippled. Your heartbeat was strong but you struggled to find it.
What courses through the channels of my body and yours is very much the same.
You nearly cried last year when a storm cracked one of my limbs. You forget that I live deep in the ground. Yes, my body can break. But I stretch across thousands of miles and thousands of years. When my body is gone I will be felt by those that remain and my awareness will course within them. You see me as held in place but I can weave the past and the future together. The cycles of years and decades and centuries are marked within my body, which is only a chapter in what I have lived.
You didn’t need to suffer so much before you came back.
A long time ago you might have climbed up towards my canopy, swung your body and leapt off at the moment of maximum speed.
Do you remember that time when you lay in my shade, daydreaming? Your ribcage sang like a crystal bowl and I dropped a leaf on your face.
Or the time you took a fallen piece of me home and laid it across your bookshelf? You pulled out strands of your hair and laid it at my roots. Now you look at it before you fall asleep and wonder if that’s why you dream with me.
But that’s not why you’re here.
Lay your head back and feel the sun. Let your skin drink it in. Let our cells glow with reflected light. As we breathe together we’re becoming a part of each other. Can you feel it yet? I’m weaving threads into your spine one at a time.
You can move even slower you know, I’ll show you how:
Why do you brace yourself? Why do you keep telling yourself that you’re alone? Soften your hand now and let it rest.
Your life, as you call it, is more than just a collection of years in this body. You don’t have to hold it all yourself. You can allow yourself to be swaddled in your unfurling and in your wilting. You can surrender your seeds of possibility, they were not all meant to grow. You can learn the beauty of being consumed. Such transformations happen whether you’re willing or not.
Leaves whither and fall, new buds lie dormant, not quite invisible but imperceptible to some. And we wait. The difference between holding back and preparing cannot be seen from the outside. We are not shaped by what others believe.
I can hear you thinking, just listen.
Each day the weather is different. The wind changes direction and parts of us bend, parts of us break, and parts of us tremble in the dark. The material around us floods, hardens, and rearranges itself.
We watch mighty stalks bow down with the weight of their blossoms, almost kissing the ground. Their bodies become dry and pale and when the earth is soft again they shelter the tender generation that will repeat it all again.
Do you understand?
Be patient.
Do not question what you know is real. Bask in the glow of your own heart and feel it radiate around you.
And when feel yourself
shrinking until you’re surrounded by blades of grass and
the shell of the body is smooth,
curl yourself into the soft loam.
as the light fades slowly, we all disappear.
we’ll share a meal together and tell this story to those who gather around.
the young ones will giggle— they won't believe it.
and we’ll say
“yes, it’s true.”The sun is setting and the body is cool, it’s time to go home now. There’s just one more thing I want to say:
I know that I’m your favorite.
You have many favorites, and so do I. But why does it surprise you to know that you are mine too? You carry those threads in your body and I, yours. Invisible lines that pulse with a current as we live and dream.
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