Stella Polare
for Kay
3:29pm
It’s Tuesday afternoon, but she doesn’t know that. The sun is angled in the sky, beating down on her increasingly freckled skin. She’s parched and weary, and joyful yet still. Her mind wanders in between reality and daydreams of faraway places. The scent of her mother’s perfume wafts in on the trade wind. Gardenias. Like spring, in the middle of summer, somewhere along the equator. A single tear barely escapes her dry eye. Her heart beats a bit louder and she whispers with regret in her voice
“Mama”
Long, drawn out, gasping sobs come in waves. Almost too tired to feel; with nothing to distract and nowhere to run, the memories and emotions wane in and out with the tides. Moments of stillness beget breath and integration, followed by an upwelling of what feels like new images and sensations. It’s the same content, just in new context and with nothing around for miles but two shades of blue divided by the horizon, the mind repeats what it knows, over and over. Torment.
Until…
A cloud rolls in up ahead. Initially, she doesn't notice it. The sensations that follow breed her awareness. She is overcome by a chill. The glare from the water recedes and her eyelids lift and reveal more than just the inner green ring of her mostly blue irises. Her pupils shrink first, as if fear, and then widen as her gaze searches the horizon, like love. Layers of clouds shift into her view. All different shapes and sizes, as if instantaneously. In reality it was likely over a half hour or so but time is less sure out there. Her agony turned to a certain kind of peace. Shoulders softened, jaw loose, her breathe effortlessly rising and falling with the rocking of the vessel beneath her.
Suddenly stillness took over and she felt free from the chains of her psyche. In her bones returned the knowing from before time stood still. It was earth watered. The unified field; this sea consciousness made itself known in her every cell. Vibrant her memories. Images of evolution replaced the childhood humdrum and she finally understood what the hippies from home meant by ‘we are all one.” Behind her eyes she saw the salt and felt the gills on her neck and her ribs and as she breathed in through her nose it was a dance of blue and deeper she saw the way oxygen once moved through before we took to legs and land.
…