you & me

Surrender Is like a River Flowing to the Sea.

I

What is the magic that you hold to your chest?

In the thrums of your heart, beating its rhythm against your bones?

You are living poetry.

~

I don’t think the past is something you want to go lugging around. I don’t think the past wants to keep being dragged, mercilessly into the present, because I don’t think the dead want to crawl out of their graves to entertain your sorrows. They are only your sorrows because you’ve refused to let them go.

~

Please… hold on to them as long as you like… treasure them as meticulously as the cranes you are folding… counting yourself to a thousand.

~

Close your eyes and make a wish.

~

Because you’ve spent half your life making space for it, it’s time. Time likes to flow as the seasons do… change… observe… mountains with clouds floating by make good sceneries for zen poems, love poems and soft kisses.

~

But now it’s time to love this soft, human, warm-blooded body of yours, because how long are you going to breathe in this world through your skin and your magic? The one in your chest, beating its rhythm onto your bones. The thrum, steady thrum of this life of yours.

~

With time, even mountains change.

~*~

II

Sleep chases after me as I try to find words to fit into my heart, my mouth, words slipping out of the pores of my skin. Somehow, I cannot find them, I cannot contain them, I cannot morph them like a smithy cleverly sharpening her tools. I forgot that because these are words, I cannot make them something else.

~*~

III

Surrender. She is a curious creature with a soft belly, a warm hide, basking in the delight of summer’s heat and springtime rain. Surrender is like a river flowing to the sea.

This is a metaphor I love, that the sea is a body… my body, your body, the Earth’s body… the depth, the deep, murmur of unconscious… wisdom… and also fear… the womb, the place of birth, creation… and the rivers are our veins, carrying our blood, carrying our death, our pollution… our waste… our healing? What do the rivers carry? What do they mean?

She said, Write… honestly. She said, Examine your traumas, fears, wounds… face them… there is a healing in this kind of poetry… of letting it be.

~*~

IV

I stare at a blank page and wonder what words I can put across it, to soothe the restless, to invite the softness, now, the softness of a beating heart, a quietly rising chest like the maps of a well-traversed terrain, breathing…

~

At what surrender feels like. these moments in time, these lessons in silence, in sound, the breath, is going home… sinking a little deeper. I remember the feeling of the cold stream on my feet, I remember the feeling of burning… and the coolness of the waterfall, soothing this earthly, fleshy carriage, vehicle, sanctuary, temple I reside in.

I remember what it felt like to lay my heart bare, in whispers, in the heart of stillness, in the embodied invitation, words, inviting you back home.

~*~

V

Reading Rumi felt like my heart had been thirsty and I didn’t even know. Hearing the truth, seeing it in its squiggles, particular squiggles that my mind had been taught to coalesce into meaning, felt like the subtle hand of something else, beyond these walls, beyond the rationalism I mistook for over-thinking and judgment.

I didn’t think I could believe in god… I don’t think I do, not God, layered with dogmatism and concepts too narrow and constrictive, to breathe properly. But whatever this feeling is — softness, surrender, movement, flow, joy, ecstasy — I could believe.

~*~

VI

You know you are here. In this moment. Take a look around… at all the beauty in your life… even the cracks are blooming now with sunlight and wild surrender. Wild, wild power.

You know, when you follow those winding paths into the woods of your unconscious, you’re learning to take responsibility for the healing of your wounds… you think… but when you get deeper into the shadows, when they engulf you, swallow you whole, what do you realize? The joy of being. The truth of your experiences. The (w)hole of nothingness.

The deep, deep pool of reflections, revealing your sharp teeth, disheveled hair and sharp claws. The primality of that creature you see…

~*~

VII

… Feel her.

***

Jess B lives in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia. She has an interest in exploring the edges of things — what is normal? — and the contexts we experience ourselves in. She’s secretly passionate about consciousness, reclaiming the Feminine, exploring balance through shadow work and unpacking old stories. She’s a piano teacher, student, and traveler. Mostly to the inner worlds, but in her time in Peru, she fell in love with the landscape, the people and the feeling of belonging. She has a background in classical music and soon, a degree in music composition, but often finds herself being drawn to the esoteric, the archetypal flavors of the wandering seeker, the alchemist and the wild woman. She loves the deeply personal, the messy and the chaotic, and the work of transmutation resonates the most with her. In the process, there is healing, and in the outcome, there is art. You could contact her via The alleys of her mind.

***

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