Voyage

The water is dark against the night sky, and in the distance the stars light the mossy pile of stones that is an island, the only land in sight, my own coastline having long since disappeared behind me.

It is cold. I am turned north, searching for something true. Perhaps the island is it, as it rears up in my path; perhaps this tumble of rock and patchy grass is the last bastion of truth.

But no. It is a mere signpost. I follow my compass—external, internal—and the island passes to my left. I am once again left wide open and alone on the water.

The stars are lanterns carried by angels. But where do they lead?

Metamorphosis

My world is about to break open; I hear it cracking beneath my feet like a gigantic egg, and I wonder: Will I fall in?

From here and now things pick up speed. Nothing will be as it was. I have longed for this change, this transformation, but to be engulfed by the unknown . . . Is it the same thing as an embrace?

No one says the water embraces the man who is drowning.

But maybe it does.

The rumble, the shift, the growing roar. I brace myself for whatever comes next.

The New World

Dawn breaks over Eden. The heavy chain holds the gates. What a lie to say we were exiled. It was our love that drove us ever outward, our longing to explore every corner of our world as well as ourselves, each other.

I say, "I love you," as if the world were new and no one had ever spoken those words before. And you clutch them to your heart like a buoy on an otherwise empty ocean. They will keep your head above the water when all else would drag you down.

Sail on, my majestic, my love. You can conquer the world. And I will be the wind at your back.