You are the prize

You are the prize

I am told, again, and I remind myself in passing moments. “No need, to rush, no need to strain, no need to figure it out, I am the prize, remember?” As if a mantra or an affirmation, I am the prize the golden ticket, it’s all within. Slow down, breathe deeply, what I experience is the prize and it’s something that we can all win. Because you too are the prize just as much as I am just as much as you are. Yet, when the mind is foggy and gray full of the jumbled noise and confusion of the days, the drama, the stories, who did this, who said that, what really matters, it all gets confused and conflicted. Do we really need a conflict in order to find peace? Or can it be found right here right now?

It’s found in the passing biker with a flower bouquet sticking out of his backpack, and here come back the thoughts and the confusion and all the fucking noise! All the fucking noise! When all that I yearn and crave for, when I am in my hands and knees, feral and bloody and ferocious is love. Is the heart. “Can you eat what it is that you desire?” Can i get my heart back for all the times that it’s been scattered and shattered? I am the prize yet why do i wait, wait for a response, a gratification, an instant hit. Because what would be left in the empty space of not knowing, the empty space of opening, of death and everything that exists in between, the quiet space. There’s no noise here. It’s beyond the this or that, it’s open. It’s wild, it’s free and it sees no distinction. Nature knows no distinction between creation and destruction, I hear, and I feel once again like a child. A child trying to climb up to the height of the adults, so I can see the world from their eyes so that maybe, just maybe I can understand. Understand why they talk in their tongues of gray. Why they lash out, why they bite and poke and stab and then pull together and pretend. Pretend to be in love until they feel their safety again. The eyes of the adults that hurt and hurt and hurt over and over and over again. I don’t want to be with the grown ups if this is what it means. Trying to learn the language of cruelty and the politics of a conversation. When to say the right thing. How loud how quiet how dynamic how still. Always a more perfect way to be, like a science class, measuring the beakers until you have just the right combination of something, what though? I’ve measured so good, I’ve made it all well, others seem moderated though complacent, so why? What is this whole equation for? Why must I continue to pretend? When all this is just to fit in.

I yearn to go to the woods. I yearn to scream until my lungs give out and I wish to scream no more. I yearn to yell and to laugh and to play and to cry and to make love and to be loud and it be quiet and give and learn and listen and I yearn to do it all without thinking about it as I do. I yearn to yell without thinking about who might hear me. I yearn to shout without knowing that at some point i must stop. I yearn to cry and to writhe and to emote so loud and so big and so much that only the stones and the trees and the dirt under my fingernails call my name and know when to settle me back into stillness. And then, then I yearn to sit and to breathe and to listen. So open so aware, so in tune for there no longer is anything locked up inside of me. I can finally hear the moons whisper through the cool air. I can finally feel the dew settle on the spruce branches. I can finally taste the mist settling in over the prairie. I can finally see the sound of the crickets and frogs announcing the arrival of dusk. Finally, oh so finally I settle into peace again and here is where I lay as I let sleep envelop me like a warm lovers embrace.