| better words . . . . here there and everywhere |
Occasionally, when I was younger, I would feel the life-urge pulse through me. I was ripe, thick with life and food and health, and my belly was rich and anxious. It used to yearn for something to fill it up, to push and swell against all of the misery and harsh words outside. But there came a day when the yearning left me and my insides withered and fell like a cold season. I now know that I have always been a crone- never a maiden, but a crone. And yet I am so intrisically connected to that other life- the one with babies, big Sunday morning breakfasts and full hearts and heads swimming with 'plans'. But the old witch in me says it won't happen and I believe her. This mockery of blood that arrives each month couldn't sustain a gnat. I feel it, no, I smell it... I indeed know it. But I know that other life. I know its possibilities, its rewards and its suffering. I remember it, perhaps too well. And on that day, for some very long moments, I felt it happening to me too. I felt death and life in the very same rush of pain deep in my belly, and I felt it leave me. Some kind of shadow-ache was left behind and I was haunted for hours. I will only ever be an inverted, macabre mirror of that beautiful force but it pains me to feel that loss, even on the comparatively and insignificantly small level it came to me. I can't imagine what it's like to be filled to the brim with possibilities and potential and urge, and then have it all taken away. |
better places . . . . over under and through |