Some days,
this body feels like
a stitched up sack of skin,
a bag of water
somehow holding together.
It aches.
It hungers.
It forgets.
It can feel like I'm trapped
inside this fragile container,
this skin and water and breath,
trying to remember
why I came here at all.
Then one evening,
lying still in my bed,
with nothing to accomplish
and nowhere to go,
the seams could no longer hold.
Behind closed eyes,
there was only
white.
A brilliance so complete
it blew my edges away.
As if the membrane
holding meat and water
into a human shape
had gloriously exploded.
There was vapor,
then radiance.
And it felt like remembering.
For a few breathless moments,
there was no distance
between here and anywhere.
Only light,
free to be light.
Then, as naturally as it had come,
the body gathered itself again.
Skin.
Water.
Breath.
The beautiful compression
we call human.
I don't tell this story
because I want you
to wish for my experience.
The experience is the least interesting part.
What mattered
was the remembering.
Not that I became light.
That I remembered
I had always been light.
Perhaps this is true
for all of us.
Perhaps beneath every fear,
every diagnosis,
every name,
every story we defend,
there is something that has never been bruised
by being human.
Perhaps this body
was never what I thought it was.
Not even a container.
Only light
agreeing
to take
a temporary shape.
And every so often,
through grace,
through stillness,
through mystery,
it remembers.