The bell tolls, and I am caught in the grip of this process, this never-ending story, this ending-yet-to-be-written, this challenge-against-the-status-quo, this push-for-meaning, this attempt-to-resolve, or be-resolved, this craving-resolute, this yearning to de-habitualize.

Pain pulses on both sides, and it is the fifth hour, and my body-walls are closing in on me, leaving me suffocated, gasping, wheezing, pleading for the spaciousness that expands that allows breath to be, that swells with nourishment, that becomes the living-will of oxygen ready to devour.

I’m out of directions to turn; the downward spiral and the upward have merged. Can’t trust my own perceptions because my temperature courses too low, falling into that danger-zone where everything is not as it seems. Yet, somehow it’s better. Yet, somehow there is singing and worshipful dance.

Hush, sweet darling, you do not have to awaken from this dream. Let it into your blood; allow it to stream through your hollows. Hush, darling girl, and let yourself be seized.

It’s the violent struggle of drowning because her sister thought that she’d be happier once baptized. It’s the plea to invite Goddess, G-d, inside. It’s the last breath; yes, that one. It’s the words that are held back, the picture-images yet to be formed.

We’re on the the dark side of the mountain and on the dark side of the mountain, no one gets dizzy because the absence of light means that we always stand our ground. And the shifts are responsible for the confusion. The changes alienate the natives. We’re in the pre-dusk darkness and if we could see our breaths would make trails amidst the air. We’d decorate the trees with yarn. We’d photograph the morning. But instead, we sit still. We sit and we muse. We muse and we wonder. We wonder and we ache.

There is no room to stretch. No chrysalis to overturn, no shell to break through, and so we cannot be the bird, and we cannot have a wingspan. No, not yet. No, not here. Instead it is silence. It is obedient stillness. It is your hand on my throat. Your words in my ear.

Are you one to struggle, or one to surrender?

And does either impulse negate the other? Do our actions impede the challenge? Can our opinions negate the discord? Or are we stuck in this space, this container that is brimming with secrets, overflowing with tears, bubbling over with blood?

On the dark side of the mountain, no one ever returns home.

Home ceases to exist. We morph into the posthuman. We transcend our humanity. We expire our dreams.

Hush, sweet darling. Fall to your knees and pray. (And become prey.) And pray. There is nothing else.

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