clarity

The island didn't sink, and none ever has. Molly and Poseidon's Family Outing turned out to cut families in half and send the bottom parts sailing through choppy seas singing shanties about how sad it were for dad to have done this, swelling his ego with their salty tears as he splashes and sloshes around and inside them, charging the water beneath them.

I was half human, I already had legs. The current drove a bolt through my spine that sent me running from the earth entirely, straight for the sun, stopping when I could hear the birds. The faster my little heart raced the more I clung to clingy skin. I couldn't move but I could feel a hand on mine, our shared pulse holding us there together.

Islands can feel small, and people gravitate towards density until a critical mass of love sporulates through the space left where the Appalachian tried to escape the Atlantic. Hands fall away. The framing was a fright to meet in the woods but it grows in the forest so I had to see it all the same from up here, too. I felt myself slipping and ran higher, stopping when I could hear the silence. From there I saw safety, then peace, then perspective, then clarity.

Atlas, Shamhat, and Huitzilopotchli supported and guided my trip across the tree. The journey softened my tongue and sharpened my words. All the attempts to shed and heal and reconcile and grow were a struggle to bind struggle itself with a neutralizing force that captures the thing and hurls it to the background at last, to get home safe, to ask the questions.

Who called the meeting? Who set the agenda?