Maybe

I have been feeling lighter lately. Maybe since last week? We have been granted an odd reprieve from winter this year and it is hard not to feel a certain lifting in one’s soul in such graceful weather, so I have considered the placebo effect. 

But no. While this unseasonably warm winter is certainly helping, the lightening is not situational as far as I can tell. It feels positional. Like I am turning (or being turned), degree by degree, to gradually face a different direction. 

I don’t think I am on the move yet, but instead of filling my pockets full of precious, broken things, I am feeling a persistent, gentle presence, coaxing me to pause and lift my eyes and look around. A wisp of a finger on my chin. Look, there is a way you could go. Shh, shh, shh. No hurry. No rush. But see? See the soft road, ambling onward, dappled and kind? 

Maybe. 

It feels tempting to accept the sun. Consume it. Let it bake my bones white. 

To eat the red fruit and let juice run down my chin. 

Feel the breeze wrap its feathered arms about and around me.

To follow the sounds until I find the water, and wash the tears from my face. 

Almost. 

It is progress to imagine it, I suppose. Imagine I am ready. That I might be able to leave this place of disaster, carrying only the lightest things with me. What is left of the lovely weight of my son. I think I have more work to do. For a while longer yet. 

Because when the end came, it was all so disorienting and sharp. My body protected itself from the worst of it as long as it could, drawing a dulling and dim shroud close around me. A fog. A hum. A cocoon. A half life. And light felt pointless.

Like light was for the lucky. 

But I’m thinking now, maybe I’ll be lucky. 

Maybe light will be for me again.