Leaf let go

I grope my way through everyday chores. The shiny white plate with a silver ring, the heavy, blue shimmering glass in my hand. I reach up to the top shelf, bending down to the organized depth of the dishwasher. The constant fumble. One step before the other. Without goal, without direction, while the thoughts are elsewhere.

Something sluggish, something unknown, something voracious resting in my soul. It gropes forward, slows me down, weighs my body to rubble. A desire to act, to dive into demanding events and lift others, to lift myself.

A desire to unfold like a flower, hungry, facing the sun, drinking its power, its life, its strength.

When will my inner flower wake up? What is it that grapples me, like an anchor holding the ship in shallow water, the heavy, obscure, mesmerizing darkness. What is it that makes my jaw tense, my shoulders crouch around my heart as if to say — I protect, I am here, I hold a place?

A dry leaf singles down outside the window. A brown, dry leaf that has chosen to let go, now, in midwinter, when the year is at its darkest hour and when the soul sinks into its depths.

A dry leaf singles down, slowly, slowly, like a raindrop soon to be released from its mother. A leaf, dry and shrunken, exempt from the grey branches, without resistance, without fighting back, it surrenders to the wind, gives in to what is to come.

Maybe I need to let go, let go of everything. Maybe I need to let my body take over, let the tension show the way, let the stillness lead to liberation.

I fold a warm, thick sweater into a cupboard. I lift the shiny mixer high. The grey carpet of wool against my bare feet. I am engulfed by the evening growing dark. Silence, a tingling sense of a seed groping, up, up, up to the surface, up to the melting light.

Deep within a whisper, a faint bell of grace.

I give in, I let go, I give myself to the dark, I affirm it, I welcome it. I become one with the dark, become one with the abyss, the abyss absorbs me, the one that slows down, the one that does not give in. The one. I allow myself to be carried away. Carried away towards home. Carried away to rest.