And then, now, much later, too many things have happened to explain. No documentation along the way. No voice, no time, only just enough limited acceptance to keep my mind focused on the point very far away.
My father has left us for now. He held my arm and looked into me with blue eyes, golden and green wings unfolding in the wrinkles of age and experience encircling his eyes, he focused on a point very far away, as he pushed his own will to the edge of the platform, face-forward against an invisible wall, making a selfless decision to jump and to fly. Strongly and clearly, he stepped into blue and white and left me behind, promising, pleading, hysterical, and exploding, echoing through the sterile halls and rooms tiled in the space where night meets day and day meets night again; he slid down and away, from behind his eyes; and I'm left tied to the other end of the line which still connects us with an expanded, screaming, new comprehension; I am held by a stranger, an angel I don't know but do recognize, pulling me back as I furiously struggle against staying here in this room, in this world, because I feel I can follow him now if they'd just let go. Her wings and her voice steady us both down, back into this room again -- this room where it began and I ended -- this world I will never remember asking for, do not want and barely understand but am forced to live on, throughout, in constant examination. Endless, and exhausting.
For seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, now years, I've been holding, carrying, and quieting the pitiful, gnawing sadness of a crushed human soul. Living in the darkness and searching for light, but cutting my hands less than before, as I cannot see but can only feel my way through, and realizing again and again: we can only take with us that which we can carry in our heart's soul. Navigating past any feelings of hurt haunts and screams lying in that distance, we stay focused: we look for the brightest stars in the black infinite nothingness, to see anything, even if it's just a glimmering speck, something to reach out to, to work by; even a moving shadow would be a considered a very good sign.
I've been out to sea trying to swim back again, learning there is no back to swim to anymore. The transition someone laid trail to, prepared for me and prepared me for, I have only the capacity to listen and try to decipher and follow -- sometimes drifting, sometimes pulling myself through the waves, shielding the cracked soul still shrieking, with arms and wrists burning, tearing to build, repairing to lengthen, accompanied by a great stillness sometimes so terrifying, sometimes so glorious. I can only truly hear with my heart and intuition. Before I could reach up to cling to anything, a black, sucking undertow grabbed me and dragged me down by my legs, broken, bruised, bleeding, an unstoppable bleeding. Cold. Crushed. Blinded with eyes open. I've been swept out, tumbling sick in the depths, clawing up again and again and gasping for cold air, looking for up, affixing my eyes and myself on a white point far beyond the blue sky, farther away than very far. Choking on waves breaking green, white, and yellow around me, I remember that once long ago, I was created and lived connected, peacefully underwater, to one person on this earth before I was born, and I could breathe underwater only because of her; but now, I have to fight to breathe on my own.
Now. Waving not drowning, stronger from fighting, I try to redefine the difference between alone and lonely, knowing I've learned too much to breathe underwater ever again; but I decide. I grow wings. I try to fly for awhile. And I try.again.
