Stealing What's Rightfully Mine

Another morning waking up wrapped around you. Skin to skin. Soul to soul. Afraid to move in case this is a house of cards. (I mean, really... how long can something this good last?)

It doesn't stop there.

When I manage to peel myself away from you, making my way to the kitchen, the morning tea, the garden, it all seems to be waiting for me. Like it wants to hold me. To be my friend or something.

This sounds silly, but everything seems to be wrapping itself around me with fewer barriers these days. Like I'm getting pretty goddamn intimate with my own life.

Then there's the canyon, up these mountains on foot. Like I do most Sundays. I can't believe this is my backyard. Holy fuck! (And I do mean holy.)

Again, that house of cards feeling. I have to remind myself to breathe, to take in as much of this as I can. And I get all sappy and sentimental right there on the side of the mountain, because I know this life is already over sometime in the future, and to be here now

And I get a feeling, maybe akin to when people say they've been granted another day by the grace of God, like they've stolen or borrowed something beautiful, and it's only a matter of time. But I can't seem to summon up that kind of modesty about it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful. But this particular grace doesn't feel like something that showered down from the heavens upon me because I won the genetic lottery as one of God's chosen, or because I managed to keep all my righteous ducks in a row, or because I'm lucky.

It feels more like grace as a revelation from within, a reckoning with my own truth. Like it was there all along, and I've been chiseling away at the layers of shit that kept me from it all these years, revealing bits and pieces at a time. To bring me to this.

So I can't say I didn't have something to do with this, this... intimacy with my own life. I had so many things to do with it.

All the times I let my heart break. Pulling over to cry in the car on the side of the road. Shattered illusions. Falling. Walking away from people, places, and things that weren't a good fit anymore. Showing up to meet my pain and then meeting it some more. All the times my shit came bubbling up at inopportune times. (Remember those 10 days in Florida?) Wondering if I would ever be able to live and love like I knew I could if I could just shed that heavy shroud! All the times I had to sit there in silence when I wanted so much to say "I love you" but my pain was too great to reach beyond it. The pushing away and pulling too close. The ego poundings. The getting vulnerable and telling the truth and feeling what I didn't want to feel. Stepping out of ruts and patterns. Knowing there was something more but not knowing how to get there. Breaking curses, clearing karma, passing tests. Journeying, journeying, journeying. Lifetime after lifetime after... drowning, burning, rotting, rising. Oh, the alchemy, the alchemy, the alchemy of my soul.


After all that, you can't tell me this is some kind of cosmic accident, that somehow this house of cards, this particular lifetime doesn't belong to me. It may be gone soon, but it isn't borrowed. It's mine. And I don't feel bad or apologetic or guilty for this intimacy--for loving the shit out of every minute of it, for getting cozy with every detail of it. Not after all that.

Not after what it took for me to find what has always been mine. I'm owning it solid now. My life is now a testament to itself. To the fires of truth that burn it down. To the ashes it rises from and the soul it grows from. To sending me around and back 'round again. To holding nothing, nothing, nothing so I can hold everything. To aching, stretching, falling, flying...

Yep, seems like I'd do just about anything for one more day in this house of cards, for another chance to wake up next to you. Another day, another chance, another moment to steal what is rightfully mine.