Running from wounded shadows into someone’s arms for safety doesn’t work when no one knows how to hold you. Strong arms are really soft lead that weares away with pressure and makes a mark.
You want to write your law on my heart, but Spirit has already done that with the Law of Love. I’m not trying to erase you, but you can’t write over love with hate, or the other way around.
And just because love can be fierce and strong and clear, and just because love can be meek and fragile and can even hurt, doesn’t mean its danger in disguise.
I am no shapeshifter dawning an enticing form of the Goddess incarnate just waiting for you to surrender to me so I can swallow you whole.
I never wanted your power. But if you don’t take up your own you will be starving for more. And nobody can contend with starving when there is food right before their eyes.
I am sweet nectar and bitter medicine for your mouth, for your heart, your eyes. Would you be able to see when what you swallowed does its work of revealing the hidden depths of your pain?
Could you remain standing when night falls and the moon calls you forth, wild and naked, that you might dance in her soft light, and become a little more free?
Or would you see the shadows lurking in the dark and run?
You run, tripping on stones mistaken for gargoyles who come to life and threaten to eat you alive.
But know this: while you run and rub yourself raw on the statues who commemorate villains past, and while you battle apparitions and punch the air, recoiling at what you see around you, I’ve been here holding something that glimmers when the light is right.
I was there in the love, using the only tool I had to reflect that light so you might find me and know you were not alone.
I was there at the bottom of the well reaching for you with a mirror in my heart and hands. But you couldn’t take it because there were stones in yours.
Copyright © 2021, Sheyorah Naify
Creature Speak 