The Boulder and the Flame

My body opens floating over Chicago,

like a day unsure of what the weather will bring.

Old smoke signals echo through my bones,

a faint wisp stinging scars.

In my heart,

once fractured,

still broken,

always whole,

what was once an unruly fire flickers softly, a flame not of warning like before but a reminder that to live is to grieve.

On my chest, a small smooth stone whittled down by persistent, consistent, attentiveness to time over generations, years, a million;

what was once a boulder now a talisman guarding the air in my lungs

in

out,

the space between heartbeats.

--

If my grief could speak, it would say

"I marvel in gratitude for the spaciousness of my existence.

I am not with you but am of you, inextricably woven into the tender threads of your rooted DNA, a gene activated only by presence to time

and time to presence.

I have no lessons to teach you because I am you, and to pretend I do not exist would be akin to denying the self-evidence of the deep sighs you take in rest, and the quickening of your heart when you see someone you love.

As you tend to me, you tend to yourself."

--

What once paralyzed-- the boulder-- now gently liberates, and what once consumed-- the flame-- now steadily fuels.

They too are me, myself, and I, incapable of true destruction as anything that matters, which is to say all matter,

no matter,

the matter.

--

Where I once wondered what I did to deserve the boulder imparted to me by her,

and the flames with which he would consume me and take away from me whenever he pleased,

I understand now the wondering was the point,

the wandering the destination.

For as Rumi reminds us, this being human is a guest house, and as Rilke requests, we must learn to love the questions.

--

And today I grief for him who will never know freedom and never nourish others without consuming them to ash,

and her, who could be free but overstuffs and weighs down,

both who cannot know the darkness is always a bell tower.

and I grieve for me who is free,

who both feeds and receives gladly,

in partnership with dying smoke signals,

an orphan of the boulder and the flame.