AGAIN

i wake up each morning having forgotten. the solace of slumber has somehow managed to hold me at rest for those hours of dark and quiet. but then i awaken to the crushing reality, AGAIN. always again and again. every time i open my eyes, i see again that she is not standing before me, and will not be again in this world. i open my hears and realize again that she cannot speak audibly anymore, nor sing the songs she wrote. only in my mind can i visualize her hands, strumming the strings of her guitar, brushing her teeth, holding a cup of tea up to her lips. i miss her hands.

so many times those hands held mine. and although i know that metaphorically and spiritually, they still do and always will, in this world they will not. and i am reminded, again and again, that this is the world in which i still must live. and the PHYSICAL absence of her form, amongst a world made of physical stuff - fluttering energy or merely illusion though it may be - drives me mad.

no matter where i look, she is not there. no matter what sounds i hear in my periphery, they are not her sounds. no matter who puts their arms around me to console the death of my heart through this loss, they are not my mother's arms. i miss her arms so desperately.

i am reduced in this state of grief to a melting wreck. completely exposed and leaking all fluids of life force. i am no longer only human. growing out of that comfortable skin is IMPERATIVE to survival under these twisted circumstances.

i now must think of absence as presence. sadness as beauty. dying as awakening. and death as the sacred rite of passage that each of us who live must earn. i HAVE to believe that death is god's greatest gift to us, and that living to get there is worth the pain of being emotionally vulnerable beasts.

barren nerves are not an invitation for hurt, but provide the opportunity for ultimate feeling - which leads fundamentally to true healing. so i must now think of my state of absolute nakedness in mourning, as my opportunity to live blissfully in the womb of her eternal body forever. the chance to be innocent again, while gaining exponentially in strength and maturity, born of her blessed influence.

so by this time tonight, i have built up again to rest in this place of peace of mind. though i know that tomorrow, i will awake again...to the deafening roar of the absence of her voice, whispering in my ear as she did every morning when i was a child, "wake up, my darling". wake up.