Moonless Night

I ran into the moonless night,
not sure what I would find.
Was I even searching?
After all, I had no light,
nothing, to show the way.
What way?

Pulled forward only by something I could not describe.
One blind step in front of the other,
stumbling over rocks and roots.
Falling.
The dead leaves cushioning my hands.

It would have made sense to turn back,
to the warmth of the fire.
But in the pure black night,
the way back had disappeared.

Then, in the stillness, in the silence of the dark,
I heard a calling.
So soft, I was temped to call it fiction.
Yet fiction is not false.
Indecipherable-
was it coming from the sky?
With my only choice to trust the yearning inside of me,
I began to run again.

First hesitant, still falling-
and then…
Swiftly as a deer, the forest my home,
I moved with primal, intuitive instinct.

I was running towards the light of the horizon,
the pink and orange sky.
My frozen breath,
the only sign of my human body.

Until it wasn’t.
Until I blended into the sunrise,
leaving only footprints behind.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Without question, 2022 was a challenging year for me. While the events were not as harsh as in the year 2020 when I faced the physical death of my older sister, I faced my own spiritual death in 2022.

A great unshedding. Certain events led me to facing the pain inside of me, conversing with my own shadows, shadows that had protected me for so long…and letting them go. It was not an easy process, nor one that I would have necessarily chose at the onset. But I am grateful for it. It has already led to more love and joy in my life, or rather, an unveiling of what was already inside me. Of course, the journey is not over. I am still human after all. Yet I feel something shifting, slowly, and I am quite certain it is only because I had the courage to go into the darkness of my pain. Ironically, it is in the depths of darkness that one finds light.