Kickstart my heart.
Do it.
I’m staring into your eyes, daring you to take action. My dad’s excavator hat flashes in my mind, pushing us to “get to work.”
You know how to do it. Your hands find the gears with gliding smoothness, and you look at me out of the corner of your eye with that grin.
Stop doubting yourself, I urge without saying it. You didn’t ask for reassurance, but I feel you needing my eyes to flash at you. You need the feeling of that magnetic gear-shift within the atmosphere between us…
You feel it. I feel it. We both know we’re moving, but moving where?
I see myself, clearing away the fog somehow. I see my hands wiping away the steam from the glass and willing the fog to lift with my prayers.
We’re moving in the darkness of the New Moon, yet I have a knowing that the shadowlands are expanding under my sight. My eyes have finally adjusted to it. I’ve found the horizon, even in the twilight.
The gloom will not o’ertake me.
If you’re with me or if you’re not, I realize, must be what it will be.
The whole time, my intentions were misplaced; only, I didn’t know. I didn’t even know it was happening. Somehow, I found myself trying to take the wheel from you. And in your anger, you became blind with rage.
Pull yourself together, I speak into my own ears. I withdraw back into my space, and I breathe it, over and over again into my chest. It fills my lungs with strength. It reminds me where I am and guides me to place my energy into the places I can be of greater service.
I choose me – my own path. I know where I want it to lead.
The feeling of the fog – that sticky humidity in the air – might remain for a long time, I think in wonder. I don’t believe so, but perhaps… But I look out into the outermost spaces and know it’s clear. The expanse is all around and these invisible forces are just ghosts of themselves.
It electrifies the air around me in that knowing faith. It draws things in, even as I see myself wanting to resist. It’s fear. We both know it.
You look into my eyes, and I see it reflected.
Stop looking at me, I scream – angry with you for showing me myself. Is it selfish? There’s worlds unexplored…
My eyes crinkle together in sadness. Doesn’t understand… The lengths I’d go to communicate it, I think, knowing that I cannot. So I turn away and stare out the window.
The miles go by and you caress my thigh, attentive to the disconnect. You look at me in sorrow, so sad for the unfortunate situation, forcing us to carry on down the road.
We can’t now, my dear.
I nod my head, and you admire my dimpled grin. Lips pursed. Body relaxes further down into the seat – a cat-like bend slinking into my back. Sliding… sliding down and feeling it compress in places that might hurt me later.
The wind whips my hair in a slap, and I hear my mother suggesting I sit up straight.
The deep sigh comes before the stretch. Both fill my body with strength.
Wriggle, wriggle–
My alignment is restoring within. The inner me, she beckons me. I hear her speak and feel her presence inside.
Moving toward yourself doesn’t mean stepping away, I say, as your eyes ask why I’m not wrapped around you anymore. They’re pleading with me to paw the back of your neck like old times.
I was choking you and clawing your eyes out a few minutes ago, but you’re looking at me like you miss it now.
I blink. You blink.
I realize some part of you does. We both do. We’re such drama queens. If I say it, we’ll both laugh. We’re so unhealthy sometimes, and we look so unabashed that it’s cute.
But I don’t feel cute anymore. We’re blind in the dark, and I know it. Instinct kicks in, not the skittering nerves of child afraid of her own shadow.
The darkness doesn’t scare me.
When the lights go out, I have a knowing that comforts me. I’m calm as the darkest night of the season, it comes. Only then does it happen for me…
I’m expanding. Can you feel it? My eyes dance with glittering magic and delight. I know you want to come along.
So do it. I want to be patient and let you decide, but there’s urgency inside. Come with me.
The whispering magic returns again and doubles over, doesn’t it? Not only to see it, but to feel the hand reaching out to you. It grasps onto your palm and reassures you. It tells us both that we can be a part of something greater than ourselves.
Off we go!
We’re vibing, baby. Me and you. We look into one another’s eyes, and it’s like music. Something flows and flowers and blooms into a fireworks show of star beams and mystery.
You might feel like it’s just me expanding, but I’m watching you and see how you’re growing, too. It’s such a glorious sight to behold that I want to hold your hand to keep myself tethered to it. Because the best part about this is watching you.
The galaxies paint our surroundings in black with specks of brilliant white. It’s expansive, being out here. It’s spread out all around us, and suddenly, I feel so small.
It’s so big. And I’m so small.
I’m no loner. I love having a buddy. You know that. No matter how nonchalant and chill I was feeling before, it was just a feeling. Those come and go. I was really just winging it off those first sensations – a different kind of consciousness.
It was you that started this chain reaction, wasn’t it? Or so it seems… I ask myself that question, like which came first, the chicken or the egg, as if I’m probing my truth out of myself.
It was something in you that you saw sparkling in my eyes, wasn’t it? The magic was yours, not mine…? Maybe I was manifesting my rise, knowing it’d come if I just hung next to you for a while.
You begin to pull away with a grin on your face. I grasp onto each of your fingers, terrified to let go. Your eyes speak to me, saying there’s no sense fighting the inevitable. My mind tells me to stop, but my hands cannot. They scramble for far too long.
Take me with you!
I’m shouting it from across the room as a child. No one is actually leaving, but I’m scared nevertheless.
Fear turns to paralysis, and now, I’m staring into the stars. Floating… Floating in the expanse.
It’s so silent that it feels loud to my ears. They question their reality but can do nothing to prove or disprove it. Instead, they must simply observe.
Observe the vastness. The awe. The magnitude.
It brings an overwhelming emotion to my eyes that I don’t yet understand. I’m floating, where there’s no oxygen for the words to breathe into being. Everything here can only be felt.
In that space alone, I feel myself.
It was me.
I smile like a child with a secret. My neck turtles in to hold it close to my heart, to protect and keep it. I’m cradling it like my old teddy bear. He sits with his two soft, light brown legs tucked between my thighs. My arms are suffocating him, wrapped in sweet delight around his neck.
He looks just the same. So happy.
His joy spirts out like a sunbeam and starts Glo-worming the inky black that’s around us. Suddenly, there’s all kinds of stuff illuminated that I never saw before – both good and bad. Enlightening nevertheless, I chirp as a helpful affirmation to myself. My finger came up with the thought and now, there’s light everywhere.
Teddy looks just the same. So happy.
I look up to see you hailing me over like a starship taxi cab, but dude– I can’t exactly will myself toward you, I begin to laugh.
The sound is like a siren, magnetizing and drawing in a way that tickles. I’m laughing so loud now that people are beginning to look. I’m a spectacle and don’t care. The joy is a bolt of light, and I’m blinded in delight.
No matter where you are, I shout, we’re all shining our light. Because I tied a thread to you, don’t you see? It might not be strong, but it’s there just the same.
I smile with love, and it showers you in warmth. You feel it sun-tanning your face and illuminating your mind.
Without force, we begin to pull toward one another.
It’s energy, I say, holding my hands up toward your greedy, groping fingers. I can feel them coming at me from across the way, and it’s sending us off balance once more.
In all the ways I wanted to be guided in life, I find myself being the one with the greater vantage point and forced to speak. Every time I open my mouth, it’s a black hole, sucking in everything and everyone like a vortex of doom.
Space junk everywhere.
We just cleaned up this mess.
I laugh at myself, and here we go again. But you are not entertained.
So again, my eyes drift back to the horizon in mirth, knowing it’ll all come together as it should.
Whether I can see through the clouds above or not, I know the Milky Way will shine its light. It shines for us all in our own little lowly places, I think with a nudge of love for others that’s born of self-love. It beams out of me just as the galaxy emits its brilliance from somewhere in the Southern skies. It illuminates and draws me back inside – energy triggering more energy from within. Warm like home, it’s a peace within myself that expands.
My cheeks flush as the heat and redness gleam from between my pinched lips. Before I know it, the little girl in me who never learned to whistle is doing just that… She’s put her lips together and blown. Before you know it, you’re whistling, too.