One day she finally knew.

As she reached out her hand for his.

Pounding head from the 50-dollar red wine she swore she was done drinking.

Rolling toward him, a familiar dance of ecstasy and agony.

A merry-go-round they both kept dropping coins in.

Desperately hoping after two years, this time would be different.

Circling a constant edge of ambivalence,

Just when his face blended with colorful memories, an ache of midnight blue pulled her back.

Into his arms,

where she could hide forever.

Each time promised never again, but again and again and again.

His touch. His smell. His voice.

His lips that gently kissed each eye

Her hand at home in his, staring back like she was magic.

High school best friends, sharing nighttime secrets and morning games because they missed each other during sleep.

Not sure where she ended and he began.

Never again,

but again and again and again.

Both addicted to the truest fix they could ever imagine.

Until her anxiety or curiosity asked too many questions, his anger grew hulk green walls, an indomitable spirit could never penetrate.

She tried to meet with force, only to strengthen the resistance.

Fortified by her voracious needs and insatiable hunger for knowing.

The truth.

She called it communication. He called it terribly annoying.

She believed in freedom. The deep undercurrent they say only swims in dreams.

But her untamed imagination stayed determined to write stories said to be insanity.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing,” in a field picking wildflowers with Rumi.

She begged him to lay down with her, but he was “just fine” where he was.

Solid. Certain. Set in the ways he knew for sure.

But today she finally knew,

waking up on the old mattress that hurt his back, reaching her bare foot for his,

Trying to gather the broken pieces to mirror back mosaics of childlike wonder.

Offering shards of her own soul in exchange for “one last time.”

Maybe she was too much? Desired too much? Too intense, crazy, undomesticated?

Maybe if she kept working, changing, growing, trying, apologizing, evolving?

But maybe was no longer an edge she was willing to stand on, and being sorry for her ferocity was exhausting and over.

Today she finally knew,

What she had to do.

Zipping up her worn black boots, wiping tears with cleared vision.

Standing in the sweet territory of silence

On the edge of the terrifying unknown.

She trembled,

as an ancestor whispered,

“Come home,”

Where the wild things grow, free, untamed, intimate, sensuous, and earthy.

No one can come with you. You must go alone.

Home.

Gathering your own joy that shakes a warehouse with laughter.

Home.

You always belonged to yourself.

Home.

Back into your comfortable skin, aged and scarred from courageous losses.

Home.

After years of painful searching, rest in your own company—the safest place to be.

Home.

In your body where sadness and joy live together. Hang a welcome sign for fear, because everything passes through.

You will not only survive, but bloom branches of resilience.

Home.

Because you have been fighting yourself way too long.

Come. Stay a while.

Home.

Where everything always moves, changes, and grounds whenever you sit down to exhale.

Home.

A threshold crossing. Into the deepest knowing. Where life and death are not opposing.

Anything is possible.

Home.

A return to the one she has always been waiting for.

As she sat outside her favorite coffee shop, dirty chai in hand.

He no longer sat across, so she grabbed her almost broken laptop, lost in the street band rhythms, as kids, dogs, and drunks danced.

She was enchanted once again, by the only story she has the power and privilege to write each moment.

Her own.

“…and there was a new voice which she slowly recognized as her own, that kept her company as she strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing she could do—determined to save the only life she could save.” ~ Mary Oliver

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