C:\>Becoming History

I see images of the dead. Not corpses nor bones, but the faces of voices no longer with us. Tapestries of years wrought directly into the skin, memories of pains and joys washing the color from tired eyes. Brittle leaves swept away in a cool wind.

I wait adrift in a moment lovingly declared the “present,” a charity to homes built on ruined sands, to the not yet buried. I feel the gentle mania, soft syllables screaming to me in my sleep that there is a whole world out there, so go out and take it, piece by piece. Keep tearing until you find the place where the lights dance upon your lashes in ecstasy eternal. But so too do I feel the wind's chill, tugging at my skirt, kissing my cheeks, blessing me with time and cursing me to use it. Blessing me with love and cursing me to feel it. Gifting me a pinhead's parcel of being, the weight of all that was when I wasn't and all that will be when I am no longer leaving me breathless and weak.

But when I feel the soil between my toes, it is soft. Bones do not carry the tales of triumph and hardship, they do not speak forgotten truths, they merely sow the meadows with their dust and shepherd new life into the sun. I breathe the sweetness around me, and remember that this is where I am meant to be. I am born of the daughters of mothers, fed from the ashes of their warmth, graced by the legacy of their tears upon wilted roots. Bounty of the Earth, raise my flesh on fire that I may be free to praise this impossible moment. Let the ache of my soul fly away on the breeze.