Category: Prose

Stranger Things

Photo by Lisa from Pexels on Pexels.com
In these strange days
I can’t help but wonder stranger things
I’ve heard it said that life here on this earth is a graduate class for the soul
You see, we are not bodies with a soul
We are, instead, souls with bodies
We have chosen to walk and talk and hurt and love
We have made an agreement with Oneness
To take a fraction of what we are
And condense down into this biological machine called a body
We have chosen to leave Oneness to become one
Single
Alone amongst others who are also alone
I can’t help but wonder what we are meant to learn 
What don’t we already know through our original experience of Oneness
Maybe it’s the simple act of experiencing the finite 
A contrast to already being so familiar with the infinite 
What an existence we must lead in Oneness 
To allow us to be so curious that we willingly come to THIS place
Full of fear and uncertainty 
Cruelty and chaos 
But also kindness and compassion 
And love
Love with all its grit and glamour 
Its risk and reward 
How brave are we to give up the infinite NOW of Oneness 
For the finite uncertainty of Earth time
Where those around us that we learn to love and cherish are
Too, bound by the limits of a linear existence 
Where love and loss are the rhythms of life’s tides upon this world
Such contrast and contradiction 
I suppose there’s beauty in it
Oh, to be able to know now what I will know after
To be able to answer with certainty what it was all for
The good and the bad
To know how good of a human I was
Where I helped
Where I hurt
Where I healed
Will I miss this experience when it’s over
Will I choose to return again
Will you
I think about all of the various mythologies of life and death
I think about how more than one thing can be true at once
How time and experience is such a strange soup
So as the world becomes more and more outlandish 
As long held collective truths seem on the verge of collapse 
The undeniable feeling that something new is being birthed
Through this terror on the back of a desperate hope
I can’t help but ponder stranger things 
And my place within it all

-gws

I Loved Myself Plenty

I loved myself plenty
I spent so much energy on him
there was none left for me
But the echos of my knowing
The spark that was always the heart of who I am
Could not be extinguished 
No matter how hard he tried
And he raged against
My defiance to submission and subjugation
And when I could endure no more
I was done
I breathed my flame back to life
And I am once again its keeper
Ensuring it is fed and protected in any storm
I will not be dimmed or diminished again

Friendship Garden

I am lucky to have cultivated a lush garden of beautiful, meaningful friendships throughout my life.  I am luckier, still, to be planted in the deep soil of my friends’ gardens where they shower me in love, and light, and their amazing company.  To exist in a well tended garden cultivates a gratitude so profound it can only erupt from me in joyful colors painted with hugs, laughter, and happy tears like sacred rain upon parched earth.

- gws