The Battleground Beneath Her Skin
(A Physiology of Light and War)

Before it reaches her;
even before her breath draws it in,
I break myself down..

  not as surrender,
  but as choice.

Each particle stripped bare,
each atom exhaled
made clean by the reckoning
of my own dark,
infused with the stubborn
weight of light
earned, not borrowed.

Within the responsibility of what
  leaves me,
I enter the quiet union—
the kneeling choice
to align with the hand of God,
to let even my smallest fragments
carry His capacity to heal.
Every airborne particle,
accountable,
deliberate,
refined enough
to cross the distance,
to enter her

without deception.

Beneath her skin,
a war unfolds.

It is not loud,
not made of swords,
but of smaller things..
things unseen by eyes,
but never missed by the marrow,
the blood,

the quiet trembling of cells
that have known both wound

  and wonder.

Light and dark..
not in theory,
but in matter
thread themselves through every atom,
every strand of her being.
Not metaphor,
but measurable:

the way shadows lean into the soft chambers of her lungs,

the way light, when chosen,
can rewrite the blueprints etched into the bloodstream.

This is the battleground..
her body,
her breath,
her most involuntary places.
Where no poetry of
seductive manipulation..
no whispered counterfeit
can cover what is real.
Only substance speaks here.
Only intent.

Only what survives the fire of accountability
earns the right to stay.

The particles come;
stripped down,
atomized,
refined.. not by accident,
but by the slow, steady grind
of volition.
They enter her;
through breath,
through pores..

through the quiet, relentless openness
that even fear cannot close completely.

And inside--
the war begins.

..   ..   ..   ..

Mitochondria spark—
tiny engines deciding

what stays,
what burns away.

Capillaries widen,
rivers branching through her like
tributaries
willing to carry
what is real,

what is earned,

what is Light.

The counterfeit falters here.
Pretty words mean nothing
to oxygen.
False portraits
dissolve beneath the chemistry of truth.
The cells remember;

  they choose.

And as the Light infuses
the quietest corners of her..
her thighs, her hips,
the soft stretch of her waist;
there is no seduction,
no trickery.

Only the hard-won intimacy
of substance made pure.

Not by the blending of oils,
not by the friction of skin,
but by the deeper,
unseen alchemy
of what enters,
what lingers,
what refuses to bow
to darkness.

The battleground is hers now.
And though the shadows  will not
yield easily,
they cannot claim her;
not where light
has been chosen,
earned,
metabolized.

The war is not over,
but benea.th her skin,
within her blood,

Light has begun
to rise.

I don't
feel anything
at all,
but I feel
it all
at once.
The brokenness,
the misery,
the weariness,
and the shame
are like
being
drenched in silt,
caked in filth,
covered with
life's crud.
I reek
of the living river—
its currents
have carried me
into a sea
of everything.
Now,
I find myself
adrift
in an ocean
of everything
and nothing.

All we really need is on the other side.
Everything here is a clutter,
brought to us by a random tide.

We see this world
with strangers' eyes.

Everything here is in darkness,
but fear you not,
for every darkness turns into light.

We have no beginning,
and even if we had,
we would look for it
in vain.

And that knowledge saves us
from the impossible
pain.

Over the snowy mountain peaks
A star is gliding through space
As I’m strolling, embracing the breeze
On Saint Anne’s frozen lake.

Icicles have crept up on the trees
All the living have run away
Sorrow lingers in the silent eve’
Dimming prayers at Winter’s gate.

The cold flurry of air penetrates the bone
Reeds wince with the chill.
A flock of birds pass by like ghosts,
their shapes trembling in fear.

Oscillating wings carve the way
as they fade away in the sky,
a new thought is born I can’t shake:
This is my home. I’ve arrived.