418: Carved Out

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To read about this image, visit my other blog Belly of a Star.

A spiral of question upon question. Answers seeping out and morphing into more queries. Butterflies that burst, each birthing from a singular, a thousand more flutters; and my mind, this tiny hook to stringed-wing, traveling into a symphony of thoughts.

How I long to be understood. To be held under the stars, in a world, where as hard as I try, I cannot connect. In a world where to be loved fully, is to lose my sense of self in the process.

To live in anguish of ever-present disappointment, pleasure turned agony, and extreme isolation or to give up this sense of self, love the All, and dedicate my life to service.

There appears no middle road.

Abandoned, let down onto myself, and then lifted up above myself. Loving bliss or extreme suffering; while the rest, in form or belief, seem to sleep in a twisted agony of their own.

The one dedicating herself to help the other, when her own self remains in dismal suffering. The one dedicating himself to a cause, when his own ability to feel and be is sacrificed.

If I am not a ‘self,’ then why would I want to be what I am not? And if I am not, then what am I to be?

The souls thinking themselves following or leading; thinking too, the sign shall come. Stepping untied alone into an illusion of nowhere, hoping to find the no one.

To sacrifice my very humanness, the quest dismissed, for universal peace. To circumvent my hollowed out self of sadness and fill it with a layering of illusion undone. Poured into the divine, into God and Goddess form, and perpetually served, sacrificed. All desire dissipated for the All.

Momentarily safe, momentarily comforted, momentarily brought out of self and back through self, and afforded the moments to blend in with the universe. The trees alive. Angel kisses. As walking ghost, carved, in this mystery undone and hidden before the finish.

I am a foreshadowing of future chapters. The ones in which I turn the pages to discover I am back on some island onto myself; victim of nothingness, grander within the nothingness of am, than the world appears in the everything of naught.

Lost in the exact canvas of eternity created through the concept and thoughts of eternity. No self creating no self, until self emerges and claims self again. Spinning in recognition of circle, defined within circle. Parts dismissed and whole returned, and whole dissected into pieces.

Onto my self, I awaken as the dreamer, and then fall asleep twice over, to awaken to the un-free one; cycling through.

Longing for the flesh and flesh alone, the timeless one to fill me complete in his coming. Longing for the one star that can see me.

To bring another one to the one I am not.

Split and made. Two becoming the unified. Split into the two again. The one splattered across the other; neither satisfied and both smothered.

How I long for rescue, as two lay clasped and connected, gasping for the breath of wisdom.

How I long for a hand to be the hand. How I long to know, to no longer be in this me. To hear the whispers behind another soul, a very spirit split open and dispersed and fed to me. No pretty fool. No ugly beast, yet secretly tucked away in between the points of eternity.

To move is to cause the other to shift. To sit is to risk falling, again and again, into the deep of nowhere.

To suffer in this humanness perchance to create the one hand I reach for that is reaching for me.

To suffer in the aftermath of bliss to connect in the river of pain.

Or to bleed out every last sense of me, and become blended in the peace of nothingness.

415: What Happened to Sam?

AWAKE Painted today

What happened to Sam?

Man, I was really missing me, today. It’s a strange sensation, missing the person I used to be. I know I am still me. And I ultimately believe people don’t completely change. But I also strongly know people can transform. I think we are meant to transform. We are meant to become the best we can be. Not in a perfectionistic way or in a people-pleasing way, but in a way that accentuates the positive-ness of our authentic being.

I am a flutter of blossoming self at the moment; no longer clinging to fixations, rapid thinking, complex worries and obsessive anxieties, I find I have an over-abundance of creative juices. To pour out some of my creativity, I started another blog, in which I share my spiritual prose, poetry, writings, and paintings. This has been a fantastic outlet. However I am missing Everyday Aspergers.

Tonight I found myself thinking, “I wish I could write a post on Everyday Aspergers.” I know! Silly, right? But I still have this thing about rules and the ‘right thing’ to do. I have managed to hold onto that Aspie trait rather firmly. I am definitely more lenient on myself and am quite capable of releasing self-judgment; yet, I get caught in this tango of evaluation of the next move without even realizing I have stepped onto the dance floor.

For the most part, I try to live in the moment, now. It is simply AMAZING…there is no other word beyond miracle and healing that I can think of to describe how I have transitioned in the last fourteen months. I owe an abundance of thanks to the readers who helped me find a space to be me.

I realized I died a thousand deaths here…and if not a thousand at least 400. Every time I wrote posts, typically, I was in a state of fear. I was afraid of judgment, of evaluation, of being seen and not being seen, of not being heard. I was longing for validation, friendship, and love. I truly thought I was an unconditional giver and lover—but I know now I had expectations, projected outcomes, and allowed myself to live on a roller coaster of being built up (very fleeting second) or tore down (torturous hours of misery). I dissected comments and instinctually found the tiniest bit of objection, insult, or non-congruency. I was a victim through and through, validating my own need for rejection and super fantastically gifted at highlighting my flaws.

That’s not part of me anymore. I am not easily offended any longer, nor hurt, bothered, brought off-balance, or quick to judge who I am based on another person’s opinion. Swear words don’t even make me quiver! Shit! That’s crazy healing right there.

I quite adore me. I see my ‘faults’ as humanness. I see my ‘gifts’ as part of the All. I fluctuate now between a state of deep inner peace and moments of “Crap; I am in pain.” When I am in physical pain I tend to get melancholic.

I went through a mini-phase of ‘acting’ like a Buddhist, saint, or what-have-you, and telling myself I could NEVER complain or say one ‘negative’ thing. I realized, shortly after this adapted way of ‘being’ that as long as I am human, I will have moments I need to be human. Trying to be otherwise, was plain silliness…and kind of felt self-righteous and spewed of righteous indignation.

I do believe that I attract into my life people and events that are ‘vibrating’ at my energetic level. I believe we all are energy. And I understand that I can still think ‘positive,’ be ‘positive,’ and attract ‘positive,’ even when I am feasibly ‘complaining;’ and even when I think the word ‘positive’ doesn’t exist or have meaning.

I have learned that the intention behind words is what matters—at least to me, and the intention affects the outcomes I readily observe in my life. If my intention is to love unconditionally, to serve, to be compassionate, and to have my life be my message, then when there are times I am struggling emotionally, that’s okay. It allows others to see I know I am human, to connect with my harder moments, and to assist me. I am not above or beyond help or service for me. I don’t want to be. I want to be on equal ground with others. Not some haughty-beyond-all being. And not some pessimistic downer. I like the middle road. I like it a lot.

Interestingly enough, I have been me for a long while now. A couple of months at least. I haven’t taken on any new roles or identities. I haven’t fallen into a new ‘passion’ I have to partake in. I wake up mostly with no plans and no intentions. It is very freeing, just being and allowing myself to be without restriction or expectation. I am finding that the more I treat myself with unconditional love and the more I grant myself freedom, the more others around me feel loved and free. This is a win-win situation.

I giggle and smile a lot now. I am still frank and to the point, but I am much quieter. There is this stillness that feels divine. And I think I am glowing sometimes. The world isn’t so bad when everything and everyone is beautiful, either.

I do miss aspects of ‘Sam.’ I miss her wild humor in which she would ramble on and on, sometimes with no point at all. I miss her brain-energy—the seemingly unlimited ability to write and write about Aspergers. I miss her constant tracking of blog stats, organizing binges, and the way her mind could leap from one cliff to another. I mourn her some. I truly do. Those aspects of self are transformed.

When I was little I would write stories about Clever Clyde the Caterpillar and his best friend Jolie the Butterfly. I always related to Clyde. He was a bit clumsy, shy but dynamic, and always in others’ business. Jolie, to me, was unreachable then. Someone I aspired to be like. Someone I longed to imitate. I think, in many ways Everyday Aspergers was my Clever Clyde, and I think in many ways Clever Clyde the caterpillar became his best friend, the beautiful butterfly.

I am still adjusting to my wings, I think. Still fluttering about. Still gleefully surprised by the glorious colors I be.

When I first started painting in the later part of 2012.

Belly of a Star Blog

409: Unconditional and Conditional Love

( I am writing more because a lot is going on with our extended family. I process to find relief. If you don’t see me around for a bit, I might take a break. Hugs and love ~ Sam)

I have had the opportunity to experience a variety of friendships. In so doing, I have learned a lot about myself and love. For the majority of my life I felt a false-love from others and gave out false-love. Even though I felt the false-love, I didn’t recognize the falsehood for what it was. I was an active participant in the illusion. Most of these friendships were based on need. This desire was masked as possible fulfillment and completion. I know now no one can complete me.

I still hold all of these people in love and light. All of my friends continue to be some of my greatest teachers. I don’t choose to see any wrong in where I have traveled, and hold no one in my life responsible, not even my self. I have forgiven me and all. I place no judgment on any of my past or current friends either. I see them as lovely lights and filled with goodness. I don’t see them based on their actions but based on their hearts.

I was a player in the game of false-love, particularly in relation to men. Most of this telling is based on reflecting back to my behavior in pre-marriage years. I think if I had read what I have written below in my twenties, I never would have seen the ‘truth’ of it, and gone on living in denial. Maybe I even would have been spiteful and angry. I think if I had read this prose in my thirties, I would have thought I already loved unconditionally, and this was a waste of my time. I would have thought the person was preaching or trying to teach what I knew. If I read this last month, I would have thought, interesting, but I know this already. But it wasn’t clear to me until recently. Dynamically clear.

For now when someone claims to love me with a conditional type of love, I don’t feel love from them. I don’t know why, but all falsehoods affect me to a great degree. I don’t even know how I see this false-love, but I do. That’s not to say that people who proclaim to love me don’t love me. I believe they do. I believe a part of them does. But I believe a greater part is in constant battle with an unmasked, unnamed, and unforgiving fear. I believe this fear constantly transforms who I am when interpreted by another. I become what another projects from fear. In rare cases I become the light of love. This, and only this, is when fear is eradicated from its shell of illusion.

There is a struggle for people to find love and claim love, because they haven’t yet found the love inside themselves.

This false-love scares me momentarily, until I dismiss the fear.

It scares me because when another feels the illusion of fear, I feel the separation.

I have those in my life now that love me unconditionally. There is much freedom in this, to be me and be loved for me. I am not loved based on my outcomes or what I do or do not do. But even I, in my relationships with others, slip back into conditional love; this is very evident in my marriage and with my children. I continue to release judgment on self and others, and to learn. I am fortunate to have such experiences available.

When I am loved unconditionally I feel fed and nurtured. When I am loved by someone with conditions, I feel caged and judged. I am learning to not feel caged and judged, and to see this as illusion too, but it is taking some practice.

Lately, I am becoming more of a projection of what another choses to see in me. I can feel this in my depths. I become what another believes he or she sees. I become, in essence what they hold within. I have heard of this happening to other people, as well. So I am not alone in this experience. It is interesting to watch as I transform based on another’s deep level. I do not at this time think I am choosing to still see “fear.” I recognize the beauty and light in all, and see the fear only as illusion, nothing more. I can’t see beyond the beauty into fear, because there is no fear at the foundation.

I know I am still learning and growing.

I no longer choose to buy into another’s pain; especially when their pain is projected onto me, as if I did something or didn’t do something to cause the hurt. I do not have the power to knock down or to build up a person. Only source and a person’s own self can affect the spirit. I do have the power to love, and in this love to bring wholeness to self. Everyone has a choice to accept what he or she thinks I am saying or to reject it. To take in what he or she interprets as my truth or to decline. To say thank you and receive or say thank you, but no thanks. In this way, ultimately it is the receiver’s choice to determine what he or she takes in. I choose to take in all as truth and none as truth. I choose not to pick and choose. Unless someone is speaking from a place of fear, then I typically, when aware, politely decline. I prefer not to take on another’s fear-projection.

I believe there are only two roots: Love or Fear. All truth grows from there. Take a fruit off of the branch and examine it for what the fruit is. Rotten equals Fear. Ripe equals Love. One can tell much from the end product. Take the final outcome and drive backwards to the root. Where there is pain, there was fear to begin with manifested in false-love—illusion. Where there is mutual healing, there is love—the only existence.

Again this is my temporary truth.

My personal interpretation that assists me:

What true friendship is: Unconditional love.

What unconditional love is: Love without want, need, perimeters and/or expectations.

What want and needs are: Self-based, ego-centered desires that one thinks will make him or her happy. Also known as illusions and/or the path to suffering.

What perimeters are: Rigidness and separation; the judge emerging to decide if another has been deemed sufficient in their actions.

What unconditional loving friendship isn’t: All relations not based on unconditional love; in other words, all relations based on conditional, false-love, aka fear.

What unconditional love is not: False-love, also known as fear.

What fear is: An illusion often manifested in various actions and/or emotions that aren’t stemmed from love.

All false-love breeds fear and pain; all true love breeds more love. This true love can lead to spontaneous awakening and healing.

When one does not feel unconditional love, either the giver is loving with false-love or the receiver is misinterpreting the gift of genuine love.

This is not love: Expectations, martyrdom, fear-based desire, giving to receive, condition based giving, imagined selfless-giving, self-projection, owning, self-based desire, deeming one special or above the rest, caring more about self than other or caring more about other than self, blame, self-loathing in the name of love, fearing the future, needs based on outcome.

In love there is no hurt. All pain is self-inflicted.

Indicators of false-love:

Look at what a giving, loving, caring person I am, why can’t you love me like I love you?

I sacrifice for you, why can’t you sacrifice for me?

I am not good enough to be your friend.

You aren’t enough.

You should do this…

You disappointed me.

You won’t/don’t love me.

If you loved me, you would….

If you do this it will all be better.

You are the best person in the world.

You are hurting me.

People can have a mutual loving relationship based on unconditional love with moments of neediness and pain; unconditional love can fluctuate just like the seasons. No one is expected to be a perfect anything. Especially not a perfect lover or perfect friend. To suggest so, would be automatic judgment and separation. However healing happens when one starts to recognize his or her actions based on fear. Then self-healing can begin to take place in the one. After the one self has begun the healing process, the other in the friendship, noting the changes in his/her friend, will either continue in a state of fear, fight the change before also seeking self-understanding, or naturally seek out the friendship to heal in a way reflected in the healed or healing friend. In this way conditional love can bring both parties to pure love based on unconditional love.

If both partners are not ready, strong, and compassionate about growth and self-awareness, blame and jealousy quickly arises and the friendship may end. Yet, being this was a friendship based on false-love the illusion is what ends, not the friendship. This enables both to be free. One to go on to further unconditional love and the other to decide to remain in denial, suffering, and repeated pain or to seek out self-love. No one is right or wrong, better or worse; they are where they are.

In some cases someone who has learned self-love will be in a friendship with someone with conditional-based love. In this instant the person who continues to love unconditionally, despite the other’s projections, demands, and needs, can reflect back the ideal form of love and in this way transform the other trapped in a pain cycle.

True love heals when one capable of unconditional love simply is.

Again my temporary truth.

Strong indicators of conditional false-love:

No desire to celebrate a friend’s successes.

Not wanting to share the friendship with anyone else.

Thinking you are the best and/or only person for that person.

Changing actions or making decisions in an attempt to gain attention.

Obsessing about the person.

Thinking you are responsible for a friend’s growth, success, triumph, or accomplishments.

Thinking you are a person’s savior, teacher, protector, or safety.

Giving self-credit for another’s joy.

Thinking you have the answers another seeks and needs.

Thinking you were used, abused, or mistreated.

Jealousy of other people in the friend’s life.

Judging and putting down a friend’s friends.

Evaluating a friend’s choices, behaviors, mannerisms, and way of being.

Feeling the need to set a friend straight, so he can see your way.

Secretly or overtly harboring feelings of hurt and a sense of abandonment about the relationship.

Talking to someone about a friendship using harmful words about the friend.

How friendship appears:

A reflection of the love a person holds about his or her inner self.

What unconditional love-based friendship feels like:
Coming Home

Day 408: Love, Judge, and Invisible Need

I judge when I think another does not ‘see’ me. I am learning to replace my judgment by thinking: “She did understand me; she did see me; she saw exactly what she chose to see.”

When someone says: “Don’t judge me,” they are being contradictory, almost hypocritical, if the negative aspects are removed from the word. For in order to claim someone is judging another, the accuser must first have judged.

To evaluate and categorize another is to judge. To decide another’s behavior is to judge. To place one’s truths on another is to judge. To say my god is the right God is to judge. To say I know a truth is to judge. Whenever a mark is made, a claim, a stake put into the earth, one becomes judger and the other judged. There is no way around this. The judger of the judging is equal to the one accused.

I am releasing my need to judge anything and anyone, and any event. I find only discomfort now in judging. And even more displeasure in defending or clarifying a feasible ‘truth.’ Clarification, unless sought after by a seeker, to me, now feels like a fear-based approach. As if I am saying, “Wait, that’s not what I mean. Please see me so you are not angry and so you will not misinterpret me.”

Now I see. I see this and I laugh.

It’s silliness in the making.

I find myself stumbling from time to time—a toddler learning to walk in all her sweetness.

Whenever I feel discomfort in my body and mind, the pain is non-explicit in its coming. Meaning there isn’t one thing or one someone who brings the pain. It is me. I am the source. Always the source. I see this clearly, and can laugh now at my own accuser: SELF.

I can accept the gift of another’s words or I can say thank you, but no thanks: Keep your gift for yourself. Not needed here.

Prior to this spring, I wanted to be understood because I longed to be seen and loved. Now that I know I am love, I am loved, and I love, the need-base has shifted.

Where I longed to be understood (loved) before. Now I long to be seen as love. But in longing to be seen as love, I recognize a desire. For there is no purpose in wanting, except to try to erase the illusion of loneliness.

I have moved beyond the need for validation, praise, and being ‘enough’ in someone else’s eyes. Usually–that is. In my harder moments of pain, I want nothing but to be held and comforted, reminded of my beauty.

However, it is in my pain now that I celebrate my ability to be human. My ability to transition into deeper wisdom. I see all as a gift. No goods and no bads. The world doesn’t hurt once the bad is removed. Even through the times of extreme anguish, an observer steps back and applauds the journey, the courage, the ever-full heart of love and praise of love.

What I still desire is for another to say: “I see you in your fullness and beauty and light. That is all I see.”

I want to be seen through eyes of love.

Which ultimately means I wish others to heal to a level where they love themselves unconditionally, and in doing so, love others the same. I have grown tired of assumptions, and guesses, and conclusions others reach about me. It’s really a waste of energy.

But I see the confusion of some—how they think they love me or another unconditionally, when in fact there are huge needs attached. (Outcome based needs. Wanting someone to be a certain way. Loving because of qualities or features, instead of loving for no reason but to love.)

I only want to be loved because I am a reflection of the good in another. That’s the only love that feels real. The only love I can feel.

In seeing this, the fact that attachment to outcome or desire implies a degree of false love and the absence of unconditional love, then I realize my very own need to be seen through the eyes of another as love is conditional, and in that way false-love. And so I practice release of even the desire to be seen as love.

I know the more I release the more I feel the love of the ALL and in this I am free.

Still the joy of being seen beyond judgment, deciphering, classifying, guesses, fingering, figuring, and dissecting is pure brilliance. And when I cross paths with a friend or another who loves this way, who loves purely, the healing is phenomenal.

I recognize the light in you, so many say, but do they really?

I want my voice to be a healing vibration of love and nothing else. Yet, when I open my mouth, or type on a screen, I am faced with the reality of others’ interpretation. The only remedy is not to speak. And here I am thinking might be where I am headed.

The more I speak or write, the more I hurt. MY soul knows no one can hear me unless he or she wants to hear me; and those that don’t hear, will turn me into any fantasy they choose. And thusly, I am writing for the few that will see me; the ones able to move beyond the judgment and analysis and pondering. The rest who don’t love unconditionally, will judge me.

And to me, this is my sacrifice for love: To be judged over and over, and made into someone I am not.

Someday I will give up this sacrifice and give up the thought of sacrifice, and just be at peace. I will be that person who barely speaks unless approached by genuine seeker. For I no longer desire to speak a truth to people who are not hearing my truth. And it seems entirely silly to profess an ever-changing truth to an ever-shifting audience. I am wondering too, as I write, if that my main suffering is of the separation, the falselove, the falsehood, the fear.

It is the separation that hurts.

I grow weary of being placed into another’s expectations. Of being made to fit another’s comfort zone. I am comfort; I am love; I am freedom; and if another cannot see that, they do not see me.

I see them. I see them as love. Beyond the fear, I see only love.

I have absolutely no desire to prove a point or to debate or to establish a truth. And the strongest desire, I cannot disrobe, is the want of others to do the same. To enter with me in the space of no doubt, no fear, no cause.

I don’t even forgive anymore, because I don’t ever get to the point of anger or resentment in which I need to forgive. The anger can’t slip in long enough for me to make up lies about another. If anger comes again another day, I shall dismiss it. And if I let it linger, then I shall forgive all readily. I also don’t judge myself. If I did, I would naturally judge others. If one judges self, he undoubtedly applies this to all.

I don’t even give the benefit of the doubt to people, because I don’t doubt people. To doubt is to judge and to deem unworthy or not enough to some degree. And that is all based on the past and interpretations.

Still, as of late, I get this awful sensation from many people that I am being probed and needled, hooked upon and latched onto with their microscopic lenses to find my potential fault or meaning or wrongdoings. I get the feeling sometimes that others are searching for the ugliness in me to justify that they are better or to justify their own ugliness that they believe exists.

This makes me wonder why.

If I write with no intention but to share my truth and to love (without want of fame, recognition, love, attention, debate, profit, etc.) and only with the ‘want’ of understanding self fuller, so I can be a more loving and giving being, then what about my truth is there to dissect?

And isn’t it the most fearful who would fear my love and proclaim their truth as only truth?

Why do people want to make me into something?

I desire to be more invisible than visible now. I long to just hold you from where I am, speechless, the words all erased. And if I am selfish, it is in my desire to have someone do the same—to just love for the love we are.

407: The Echo

“Don’t tell me to smile. Don’t tell me to be happy. Don’t tell me what thoughts I should have and what thoughts I should not have. Don’t give me a list of ten ways to be better, to know better, to live better. Don’t point me to the right or left. To the star or to the saint. Just love me. Better yet, love yourself. All I need is a heart, eyes that are awake, and a place to rest the ways of the world that are not me. I am not taken in by who I am supposed to be in someone else’s eyes. I am taken in by the beauty that is me. I am already everything and All. If everyone could see they are too, there would be nothing of truths to tell.” ~ Everyday Aspergers

The Echo

A me that slips behind the scene knew this would be…

He watches with calm interest as I make my way down the river, less driftwood than pioneer on a raft with beating paddle.

I can see him, this undone one of none, the way he stands back and lets me be, watches as this illusioned I meanders from this truth to another; his kindly grin in the bleakest moments of darkness; his hands strong.

A cradle awaits.

Still this determination that bleeds out righteousness.

This will momentarily unbearable in its strength and stellar.

A hankering, this lingering, this potent folly of not being able to shake self from self.

To describe would do injustice, and to not describe would cause further agonizing despair.

For how to tell what I am, through I am, seems to produce jeopardy—two battled two, then four, and then more.

Swordsmen swift, many in count, each timber for the maker, each wood to be chopped, each, once tree, now distant edges merging into their own shadow.

A labyrinth of the huntsman, the hunter and the hunted same;

Each a mirror staring down a mirror, and each unnerved and brought up for game.

I is sliced and rendered empty.

Slaughtered and sacrificed.

And still this ever present, ever changing presence remains.

The one cannot help but think I am illusion.

How could I be anything else?

And even illusion, being something, is transformed into the thought of nothing, by the floating mind that reasons further in invisible plundering.

To move in such a distinct rhythm of naught.

Being here, then being gone, then being here much changed.

Tinkering toys of this world, and smile, the child’s smile— teeth wide and unburdened, stomach growing, fed upon canary two-fold.

To eat away at this place I thinks I is.

To eat away at what I think be sight.

To make morsel out of fantasy.

To understand the doctrines inside the explicit words of absence.

And bite into the existence of others’ thoughts, when their thoughts are built upon the ponds of nothing.

How and where to find the start of truth is ceasing to appear explicitly lost before found.

The maker dead before rendering wholeness.

The absoluteness evaporated before finalized.

All these trumpeting warriors blended into the background of reclaiming selves before first step is made on a path where footsteps are not held.

A witness to the soldiers before these carved eyes, in their bleakness and plight, screaming out for the way that never comes, through shadows of soul-bled sorrow.

How can so many exist and still further emerge, and where do they walk if not upon some very beating spirit?

I know not what I do or who I am, and this is insignificant compared to the ghosts I watch, to the empty places I thought were one, to the solidness dissipating, and to the rules clinging to the mass of nothing, as choking vine.

Only to be dismissed by the thousand witnesses birthed.

Still she comes, this form, this lost victimless one of none.

For no victim remains when foe is banished.

Yet, she cries holding the thousands of deaths in full arms, the one after the other burdened and unquenchable.

The captain in charge of the mourning, of the dissipation of one phantom begotten onto another.

Goodbye, she whispers, her hand gauntly and appetite diminished, her mind wavering between a place of no thought and every thought.

Her emptiness dismissed by her want and need for explanation, in a land that whispers without voice and forethought: there exists no need.

But if all that she is be need, then what is she?

Again she dies upon self, self-inflicted no more, pierced by the echo of evergreen.

How can she be this ghost of unraveling;

Her death made known to no one and no thing?

Her heart pierced by what ifs and circumstance that never need rise, since all is fallen.

She walks in the forest, a demon twisted into raven, a plastered wall onto herself, lost between the space leading from one room to another.

Until all rooms explode and the house is hovering in the existence of space.

And still the house crumbles and woman bled dry remains, withered and emptied of soul.

And here she wavers, a distant shell.

The only passerby another illusioned being that hears the self’s whisper of ocean wave gone.

A distant calling centered at the dolphin’s heart—he too swimming in a pool of imaginings.

He too wondering where the trees have gone.