waterfall
We stood in the river, waist-high in the salvation of the only cool that August knew, she was a tiger in the sun and I, a fish come to life again in a current of truth. She told me something, she spoke for many with words that could have stung were they not so necessary and she had it all together then, when I had fallen apart.
Now I see her, parts of her sometimes flashing through a crowd like a rock concert mosh pit, I watch those boys hand her overhead surfing sweaty teenage bodies and she's laughing, laughing shirt torn and deep secrets are leaking out all over the dance floor for them to slip on, drunk on springtime absynthe. I've got my eye on her but I can't quite reach to pull her out of there even if I thought she wanted to come home.
My sister, emphatically declared independence and then set to work organizing and packing up everything she would need to be free, sewed herself a patchwork prom dress and then waited at the door for her date to arrive, passing the time by writing postcards as if she'd already gone. Well, it's just about midnight and the dress is getting wrinkled and the ball is about to drop and the coach will soon be a pumpkin again so the story goes.
Now her pride may send her walking off barefoot into the sunset alone as she finds the magic shoes no longer fitting. Well, pride is made of ego, and ego is built of fear, and rats and snails and puppy dog tails are what they say little boys are made of. Something about that girl in the river taught me that if you know in your heart what you're made of and why you're here then you belong up there on that stage and not in the mosh pit so I got out as soon as I could get my feet under me. It gets lonely up here sometimes, turning away attention and then craving it, refusing to hear them tell me I'm beautiful and then wondering if I really am, but in those moments of wholeness when it all just IS, I feel the blessing of everyone who has ever challenged me to become more of my Self.
This is the most powerful gift of all, and this is what I offer to my sister with an outstretched arm to retrieve one giddy and giggling girl from the jaws of the great big "I don't know".
True freedom comes from Knowing
and the river remembers,
it all comes back.