“I cannot stay in this place.”
There is safety in plane wings and the pull of heaven in the sea. Shadows there have a gravity all their own. Long, heavy, mountainous, breathing bodies that startle steady breaths into sporadic, bitter bursts. They come in up swells and lengthy lunar cycles. You paddle for the outer limits in waters often turbulent, but there is comfort being so deep you start to breathe bubbles. This is my muted voice. This is a language of my own choosing. The kind that pulls me away from people and erects walls in the vacuum of the Jungian deep. Four of them — two long, two short, something of a narrow shoebox — and a low roof to bump your head on. A place your own. Somewhere to feel safe.
Even in violent winds, you can learn to fortify a shelter. Peel hands from your neck, discover.
Solitude in strangers’ grasps and tilting arms. Fingertips at the ready. Speaking through the peace for a sense of quiet and ease. When the bubbles in your voice finally give way to an orange slice smile and delight in finding rhythm and rhyme. Somewhere in the wreckage of propeller fans and the shredded remnants of in-flight safety protocol (secure your own before helping others) you have built something lasting, something like home. It is heat and melody. It is close distance.
It is who you are:
Finding the best in the worst and learning to take comfort in it. Through troubled water, sky, or self.
Photo Credit: Antony J Shepherd Flickr via Compfight cc
