Reveries of Heresy

Theia, Earth’s first love, you set her into eternal motion, and birthed our blessed moon. Four billion years ago, you coalesced with Earth in a glancing blow, you heralded the first note by pulling the gravitational bow, kicking up the raw dust in this waltz of orbital scars. Forgotten goddess, invisible knot in the galaxy’s skein; all life traces its pulse back to you, surging to the rhythm of your pull, your tides, your seasons, hidden muse. Theia, Earth’s first love, rest deep beneath the ocean bed while we strive and toil overhead. Your work is complete; Selene is your legacy— she will withstand long after sapiens wither into antiquity. Theia, Earth’s true love, you balanced her axis, and taught her to endure. Sleep now beneath the ocean bed, as Lethe slowly wanes away: each breath, each ash, the core.

Could one have a memory  of a life never lived?  Mist clinging to my pores, dew trickling down my cheek, my body sinks deep into the moss beneath. Willows sway gently above the swamp, light seeping slyly through foliage, the gleam of a salamander’s skin. Fairy inkcaps sprout unbidden from decaying logs, a hidden home for earwigs and slugs raising their family in the dark. Enshrouded and sodden as my soul, these creatures, knowing, soothe  more deeply  than humans hands ever could. If so, how could they be but a memory of a life never lived…

Why would a being with bones forged in supernova, stardust rippling through her veins, need a planet to orbit her gravity; a watchful sentry to keep her safe? Why would a boundless ocean, depths darker than nightmares, need an anchor to tether, or a dam to hinder her; a bejewelled cage masquerading as home? To be loathed is to be lissomely liberated; to be rejected is to be reverently rerouted; to be abandoned is to be embraced in inner authority and authenticity And in that knowing, unearth the sacred North Star within, reunite with your old friend from the womb of your tomb— a teardrop merging with the ocean, returning at last to yourself, the home you’ve always cradled within

The tiger, pacing back and forth, wears down tracks in soil beneath its pensive paws Who is truly the prisoner— the beast in this simulated wild, confined by barbed edges, or the onlooker wandering an infinite expanse, indelible grooves in her mind carved by relentless rumination— until thought itself becomes a beast: The king of the jungle, crown inked in bold black strokes, abased to a spectacle, a harlequin to behold Does taming these thoughts mean snuffing out their majesty, or making them kneel before the king— that testy, tempestuous thing? And yet, when the cloak of darkness descends, would the tiger’s amber eyes gleam as a North Star, illuminating the way to truth beyond these barbed horizons?

what I feel now isn’t this moment’s feeling but the echo of a sealed life, a memory seared into me: a baby begging on her knees, screaming for her mom  not to leave, her dad hauling her body out the door— me, a half-alive flounder flopping, mouth hooked by the fisher-brute, shin-stoppers scraping the floor then you looked at me with those well-deep eyes, and the floorboards  splintered— you were the catalyst, erupting all the feelings  I’d buried, dormant heat rising until I boiled & flayed to hide you, poison & medicine, anathema & anaesthetic— feeding the starved creatures inside my belly until they  exploded, splattered, entangled with your monsters, fused into the mess we are now: two flounders stranded on sand, gasping, mistaking breath  for love