I want to lay down in a green field, with rain falling in a light mist on my cheeks,
And I want to let myself grow roots,
Let my heart take hold of the soil and feel the damp imperfection of it.
The roughness and the cool, dark flavor of it that seeps inside you and won't leave.
I want to breathe.
I was so sure that everything was over.
I was so sure that I had to fight. To survive. To put my head down and trudge on.
I was so sure I would never have the chance to lay in the grass and think again.
I wish I could explain this complex joy.
It's so pure that it feels like grief.
It's what you see in the tears of people who thought their children died in a school shooting when they finally hug them and feel their small, warm heartbeats, safe and sound.
A relief so complete that it destroys you.
A love so powerful that it ruins you.
A happiness so intense that it breaks you down in sobs.
I was so sure I would never be home again. I didn't know how sure. I refused to know it.
But here I am, and I am lost to this feeling.
This impossible reprieve.
I don't believe in god. I don't worship in temples or churches.
But I have known rapture. Rebirth. Total salvation, so perfect that it breaks my heart.
It doesn't come from god, from heaven or hell-
For I hold both of them in the pit of my stomach,
And sometimes they war,
And sometimes they burn,
And sometimes
They reach out and touch each other's faces with such love and tenderness that the light they throw off
Shatters my skin like it's a shell made of sugar,
And washes the entire world white.
I want to surrender to how afraid I was that I would never feel truly at home again,
And how utterly grateful I am that I have another second to believe that I might.
I want to spread myself on the cool ground and let my body sink inside it,
Thank it for touching my shoulder blades and my hair and the backs of my ankles with its comforting solidity.
It feels as if my lungs have grown, as if they'd been locked in bronze for months,
And only now have they remembered how vast they used to be, and how hungry to live
And learned their art again.
This joy comes from something greater than god.
Greater than punishment or salvation.
Greater than wrong or right or good or evil.
This is the spark that jump starts every soul
That begins us
At the very start
The first breath,
And it has begun me again
And I don't know why it did,
But I feel so lucky
I feel so
Saved.
I don't know who or what to cry to,
To thank,
To repay.
I only know that I can breathe.
And that I have never had such moving gratitude
For anything in my entire life.