Stories

     It's always stories. Life is always stories. In the end, no one cares about "just the facts, m'am", unless the facts sound like a story, leading you somewhere.

     It's always stories. When someone asks "What's the meaning of my life? or "Who am I?" -- they mean "What is my Story? Where am I in it now? What makes it worth the telling? Is anyone else hearing it? Is anyone listening?"  Maybe our stories have many authors, but only one editor. We must shape and direct and, in the end, answer those questions for ourselves. And yet --

     It's always stories. Yours, mine, intertwine and influence, characters in each others plays, ghosts in each others visions. The characters in all the stories of this world are speaking at once. How can we listen to only one? Impossible.

Persephone

All the treasures I touched have turned to dust.
Weights drag me back toward the drowning pool with every step.
A heavy mystery works against me.

This place has no meaning, no feeling of home or belonging.
A stranger looks back at me from a mirror before glancing to the side.

Did I stop somewhere along the way as my life went on without me?
I feel the weights.
I feel the weights.

Circles of hell I've always walked.
I see this now.
When I thought I was stepping out of one, I stepped into a smaller, tighter one.
One day I will reach that Center where no movement can be made, and there is no smaller thing for me to become.
Where my life and my death meet, there can be nothing left to find--
except my salvation.

I go to this center, to this lowest region of Hades.
I accept this as the quest set to me:
To journey through the deserts of corruption and emptiness while dreams of Paradise plague me until I reach some final Hell of Enlightenment.

Once I resisted this darkness as a shroud of annihilation.
Now I will wear this shroud as the robe of my calling.
I will look into this blankness as my mirror,
walk into this Cold Embrace, rest my weary forehead on her shoulder
as her smooth cool hand takes mine.
She leads me.
Now I will see
What she will show me.