Gravitations

I picture her inside my mind's eye:

a void space where I do not have to feel my feet burn against Earth's surface. Where I watch Earth spin from behind vacant eyes.

//

She appears before me almost urgently, her glow a beacon. At first, she is as small as a marble--a bead of craters I can hold within my palms.

Her pull is heavy in my aching fists.

Somehow, I feel the gravity against my heart. It spirals through me like an ocean, sending my physical body to its knees.

//

//

I cannot hold her for long. After all, such a power demands to be free.

//

//

I am released from her gravitational pull. She expands within my void space and then even further beyond--her craters cratering each carefully curated inch of my psyche.

She is now a Goddess before me: her Black skin painted like frozen waterfalls against her planetary body. Stretched. Molded by years of guiding and protecting. Firelight reverberates off of her, both as particles and waves, and I know now why we deem some beings as "majesty." Her refulgence is so profound that I am forced to shield my mind's eye.

//

//

//

I do not bear witness as she steps toward me, shrinking to meet my size (still, I swear she towers over me).

//

I do not truly feel her fingers as they graze over mine, nor as she lowers my hands from my inner eye.

//

My vacant eyes meet her golden glow, reflecting years of mysterious evolution into me. We do not need to speak to know I am incapable of bearing this weight. After all, I can barely

carry

my own.

Still, her gaze pierces mine, and she presses

just a fraction of generational burden

into me. The heaviness is overwhelming--a sensation like something flowing, all-consuming, as if supplanting the blood in my veins. My mind, my body, begins to glow;

then, so, so

slowly,

softens.

//

//

She whispers to me something I cannot hear.

//

//

I feel it deep within my core. An extension, I can only assume, of her gravity.

//

//

Her palms, creased from centuries of sculpting Earth's tides, stretch beyond me. I follow as she points outside my inner world, guiding my vacant eyes to where she rests

amongst the stars and beyond the trees,

watching me

watch her,

my knees buried within Earth's cool glade. Only her essence remains

as momentary relief from the pain.