I go to the wellspring. It is not easy.

I have been encased in ice, glacial, that pressure, huge, those forces of immobility meeting at the point where I am, my breast bone, shoulders, belly, spine.

I have been still, held, silent.

I go to the wellspring. I go down on my knees, eyes cast down, a shuddering breath.

She takes my face in her hands. She takes my face and lifts it to hers. I am bathed in radiance. I am filled with breath.

She whistles the worms from my hair, combs her fingers through to loose the grit and twigs, the bones of small things long extinct. She combs me clean, calls me by my name, calls me into myself where I sit, face to face with her infinite grace.

“Remember this,” she says. “You don’t have to hold anything. You are the burnished surface in which beauty seeks itself. Be that.”

OOO