The grief had lodged itself in my shoulder and caused my jaw to clench leaving little room for the breathing that longed to be deep. I put the flame to all that old hair hanging around, hoping and praying it might burn up some of the pain, that I could bear witness to the smoke and it's leaving. So much leaving. I pushed the walls far away-to the freeway and the arterial-so that what they housed could be driven, or rather forgiven, a way to love. I rested my right hand over my shoulder, hovering and feeling the heat of emotions stuck in traffic. I wondered about what had gone unseen, what eyes were peeking out of me waiting for me to return their gaze and innocent inquiry as to why I could not stop disappearing myself. I wondered and I hovered as that heat began to rise. I begged my heart to open and promised not to judge it's contents. There were just so many pieces and even as it pertained to my own heart, feelings of unworthiness left me asking, am I  allowed my own brokenness? 

I continued to wonder and to hover. As my breath searched for the pit of my stomach, my joints began to release deep and resounding cries from the caves of my insides popping and unlocking a well of tears that sprang forth like crude oil from this earth. Fossils of hurt so old they had liquified and could now be used as the fuel to drive me home, some place where there are no stories other than the truth of this existence. 

To the question of how, and the doing of being I admit I am well, that I am grateful. I have been loyal to strife before and felt the crushing weight a lack of grace can carry. I question myself as to whether or not this is true, this wellness and this gratitude and see the same questioning in their eyes, like how can you be? I can't afford to not be. Today, no bomb was dropped on me. I have shelter. I have food. I can walk. I can talk. Some days, I even feel safe enough to feel this sorrow we've all got bubbling just below the surface. I have learned that grief and joy are not mutually exclusive. They must, in truth, learn to share the road. If they don't, neither one will carry you home as they both have the capacity to do. 

I can feel your insides like they are my own. I don't want to lie anymore, about what I felt in there. I cannot pretend I did not hear every whisper, and how loudly it landed in my heart. That time you wished me place-less-ness and said I was from nowhere. That time you refused to see me in you, being and breathing just as you do. That time I treaded water long enough to see the sunset melt into the horizon, and found out you love me most when I am drowning. I heard your love too but I cannot drown for you. I stay driving on roads paved with waves and swimming in oceans of dry Earth. I pray for buoyancy. Fluidity. Clarity. Grace. Please teach me to love freely, to give and receive with ease. 

Some ghost in me laughs silently at all we've built around the soul, as if it was ending. As if it had not been traveling the stars for longer than there are words to describe. This mirage world of fading, vibrating together just enough so that we do not see the seams of things and their falling apart. Maybe we all need to fall apart. Unravel and reveal our true colors, in all their brilliance. In all their running and bleeding, every hue. Green grief and yellow yearning. Red rage and orange onus. Blue boundaries and indigo insight. The clear color of what is beyond sight. Mix and muddy it all together and black become us, an aliveness so close sometimes we forget, what we mistook for no thing was something, a sum of things that  totaled you and me. This is what I found wondering and hovering  as I coaxed my heart open, , heat rising, breath deepening, and shoulder releasing . The grief was like an eraser taken to a blank page, drawing back that blanket of disappearing to reveal a landscape worthy of inhaling. Worthy of releasing. Breathing, being and letting go.