Right now, these shallow, tentative breaths
Interdispersed with an occasional deep gasp for air
It feels like walking on stepping stones
Where if you touch or fall into the water between, it burns, not just your skin but all of you, eating away at you like sulphur
It feels like balancing one foot at a time
On a square stone path that stretches as far as the eye can see, further than comprehension
It feels like this stone, this place that is so precarious
Is anchored very gently
With words like
I’m sorry
Please forgive me
Thank you
I love you
Like any other thought is precarious
Like if I start to relax and move around too much, think or say or look at or feel anything else, next minute I am risk of drowning
Flooded by every emotion, gnawing at my belly, pouring out my eyes, gasping in my chest, succumbing to despair
Yesterday sobbing “how? How? How can I possibly…”
And finding the answer “one breath at a time”.
One breath where I am not tearing myself at the seams, by banging up against a reality that is unmovable.
Like the way I was walking, came up against a giant wall. Thick, stone, high, stretching to infinity left, right, up and down. Thick thick stone, hard. I flail at it and I only injure myself.
On the other side of that wall, is the one I love. His body, his breath, his physical form, I am seperated from it forever. All of life is. It is there and the present moment is here.
Like I was walking with him, and he passed through that wall, and I cannot. That is death, that is mortality.
It makes me want to die too. But even if I did…
Realising suddenly, the wall did not appear in front of me. It is behind me. I am facing backwards.
We were walking together and I took a step past it, and he could not. And now his body his life and his form are stuck there forever.
And I’m so sorry, I don’t know how this happened, I didn’t mean or want to step without you. I don’t want to. I want you to come forward with me. I don’t want to step forward anymore without you.
I’m so sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
I love you….
awkwardangel 