My body is a river

My body is a river. I flow incessantly in the currents of time, with no way or desire to rest. I will experience turns and waterfalls and I will rush to the sea expecting it to welcome me, only to find myself swallowed by its infinity, lost in its depth never to be found again. I will cease to exist at the entry, but should someone look back, there I am, forever flowing in time and forever lost in the sea.

I will have left an imprint in this world, look, there is the bed I used to lay in (never still) and the path I carved out for myself, so I could get here faster, running away from what I was chasing.

Oh, what an irony. I hear thunder like the boasting laughter of a God looking down on its daughter, thinking her a fool.

Who can I turn to, in my desperation, when my creator has tricked me so? Who will be there to hear my scream when I take the last turn, and I see the darkness lingering there with its jaws open? Will someone jump in and try to pull me back? Just to give me a few more seconds on this earth, to see my spirit dance its wildness away one last time.

Mother, hold my hand.

Father, talk to me.

Brother, run with me on this last strip of dirt.

Don’t leave me alone, now, I am scared for my life.

I have loved so deeply. I have given away laughter without a second thought. I have listened and spoken, jumped and sung, thanked and welcomed.

People have learned my name and used it. It has sometimes sounded angry, other times disappointed. Some have mispronounced it; some have shortened it. Others have whispered it into my skin, so lovingly it tickled.

There have been times in which my name – my identity – has hung over me like a threat. And times in which it has saved me from drowning in my own waters, in which hearing that simple word, which belonged to me, pronounced by a friend, has been a lighthouse directing my ship out of the storm.

I have used my senses to walk the earth. I have tasted, touched, smelled, heard. I have seen my image reflected in the water, and I wore a smile on my lips. My cheeks were filled with blood, my eyes with light. I was alive, blessed with a future.

And yet only now that I feel time draining out of me, and the end pulling my hair, has the consciousness of life finally settled in me. And my tears have never burned so painfully, my voice never broken so irreversibly, my limbs never shaken so mournfully.

I am old. I have lived for many decades in this transitory world.

Death has visited me before. It has picked up souls in its ugly, silent carriage, the hooves of its stallions shaking the ground and ringing the bells of the church. And I have bid them goodbye, those souls which I had learned to love and to rely on.

But never before have I stared into its face. How could I have prepared for this glowing stare? These wretchedly kind eyes, who judge me for nothing but punish me for everything? Who cry with me as I try to reverse my course, choking on all the life I still wish for myself?

And in this moment of perishing, images of my past fly around me, and I reach out my arms to grab them, I try to hold on to them. Please, take me with you, I mouth silently, water in my mouth, tasting like metal.

Take me back to that waterfall that washed me of all sorrows, up to the sky from which I can fall out as a storm, and then start again.

I renounce my essence as a moving body, make me a lake, make me a puddle, even. Keep me here, forever, because I love my existence, and I fear my disappearance.

But life is an open-ended circle. You arrive at the end, and you see, on the other side of the gorge, the beginning of your life. Your heart starts to race in excitement, because look! You get another chance! You get to redo everything with larger shoulders, stronger legs. You get to make right your many mistakes. Because you know now to thank your mother, for never loving you less. For hiding her tears from your innocent eyes. And you know now to kiss your father as he ages, so he can feel less lonely.

And in your hope, in your exhilaration, you forget to look down before you jump. You feel invincible when you are at your most vulnerable.

If you had looked down, even just for a second, you would have seen that your feet were too bloody to support you, and the veins in your legs too knobby to uphold you. You would have stopped your run and approached the chasm with reverence, your hands folded in prayer. And then, maybe, your inevitable fall would have been gentler. It wouldn’t have taken you so wholly by surprise, it wouldn’t have shattered your bones with such vehemence. Death would have lulled you to sleep just like your mother used to, when you were a babe.

***

I stand at the gate, clad in white, looking back to all those who have known me, who stand gathered around what I once was.

Its hands are stroking my back gently, giving me comfort while it waits for me to say my final goodbye.

Thank you, my loved ones, for grieving my departure.

Thank you, earth, for welcoming my remains.

Thank you, birds, for singing on this normal day.

Thank you, wind, for pausing as I pass.

And thank you, you with your soft fingers and your welcoming embrace, for taking my hand as I cross into your realm, because I am too scared to keep my eyes open.