The things that stopped us
were all in our own heads,
insurmountable monuments
to our inability.
It didn’t seem
that we could shake the chains
that they had bound around
our minds.
What kind of life was this?
It was you,
who first woke up
and stood before the day.
I could see your brow
furrowed in thought.
There was a look in your eyes,
something I had not seen
in a long time;
purpose.
It lit your features from within.
You looked simultaneously
both older and younger,
wiser and more virile,
stronger,
yet understanding deeper
the mystery
of our confinement.
You stepped forward boldly,
one step further
than either of us had stepped before.
Out into what might have been
wide open space,
but your foot held,
and then you took another.
All the barriers that held us back
began to shimmer.
Those high walls
and deep chasms
fading around the edges.
I found myself rising from my rest.
my eyes wide and mind enrapt
as you began to walk,
then stride,
then march with confidence,
clear through those unopposable barriers
that imprisoned us.
With tears in my eyes,
I followed.
Meekly. Tenuously.
With trepidation, I took that step
and my mind cried out
to return to the safety
of what we had known.
Great fear
threatened to overtake me.
My body shook
and my breathing came
in ragged gasps.
Two steps,
three,
and then a fourth;
through the barriers
that had framed my reality.
My tears became mourning;
for it was us who had deceived ourselves.
Then anger;
for it was some nefarious “Other”
whom stood to gain from our deception.
Finally,
as I stepped out on the other side
of our gossamer divide,
I saw you standing there
on a hill
looking out over a new, wide world.
It was then
that I understood,
that reality is an arrangement
old as time.
You and I had merely
altered our terms of the deal.
We had bargained with the Universe,
or God, or whoever,
and chosen our own fate.
How badly I had wanted to turn back
and return to what I knew
was falsehood and illusion,
only because
my ego and heart
could not bear the idea that
our whole lives were an illusion,
A trick,
A trap.
An ecosystem built and designed
to keep us docile and subservient,
like a zoo for humans.
Now, standing on the other side,
I understood those whose fear
was too great
to push against the walls,
and pull against the chains.
It was not for fear that they
would never be free,
but for the fear that they would be.
I walked up the hill to you,
The grass between my toes felt alive
and the colors of the hills
and the sky, vibrant
in a way I had never known.
From the hill
I took in mountains,
and rivers,
and plains
and a sky stretching out as far as I could see
in every direction.
For the first time in my life,
I felt truly vulnerable,
so small and insignificant
against the vastness of this new, wide world,
but you held me
and I held you in return.
In that moment,
I new
that we were meant for this.
This was truth,
and destiny.
I looked into your eyes
and smiled
and we stepped forward
into a new existence,
a new life.
HG – 2021