In the Flames

In this moment, I am feeling the grainy-eyed anxiety that sometimes follows the intensity of feeling into the places in the dreams that bring me the most pain or grief. In this moment, I am willing to do this homework, to be the girl tied up in the burning building. I see her. She is the terrified, trapped girl who sees no escape. The flames are burning her and she is filled with rage and grief. She does not know that, in this moment, she is not alone. Her champion coming to remove her bondage and lift her up and carry her down from the burning building, if she can just stop raging long enough to see him. In this moment, this girl hurts. She feels lost, scared, abandoned. In this moment, her world has narrowed to rough-hewn bondage and tongues of fire. Her eyes have sizzled from her skull. She cannot see. She did not know how.

An army of young men, filled with youthful vigor standing toe to toe, forehead to forehead, breast to breast with me. In this moment, I notice that I do not feel threatened. In this moment, I feel uncomfortably safe and calm. In this moment, I notice that I do not run. I do not fix. I do not fight or control. I do not care take or judge. I do not take. I am just in this moment, eyes closed, pressing foreheads together, the weight of their bodies supports me, holds me up. I need no muscles, no skeletal structure, no eyes or ears, no hands or feet. There is only my awareness of being literally supported. Safety in numbers, a pause before the swirl of fire engulfs...

In this moment, when I realize there is a girl tied up in the burning building, it is the same moment that the man runs into the building to find her. There is nothing to do but let him and acknowledge that there is a girl tied up in a burning building and know that girl is me.