Playgrounds

My body is a jungle gym; my scar the stomping ground of tiny feet finding their footing in this world, to a loud, inconsistently changing hymn of urgent cries and belly giggles, into these racing seconds swirled.

My arms are the monkey bars from which you swing, my hair the branches for more textured momentum; you sing and venture out into the unknown, always returning to the centrum. Of your universe. Of mine.

My belly is your trampoline, soft and welcoming, a familiar to your soul; a gentle homecoming to the place that made you whole, my empty nest of uterine kicks nourished now by the fullness of your smiling lips, everything you are and are to be. Forever a part of me.

My hands are your guardrails, your guiding stick, your bandages; always there to catch you at first-attempt fails, to reassure, to heal, to calm, to (re)attach. My legs are yours to carry you, stand steady when you're too tired to.

My body is your playground, my mind your harbour, two roles I embody always and with great ardour but for twelve hundred seconds today...it will become light and as if touched by feathers - when I visit my own. Reunited and lone.

I have the ocean at my doorstep, welcoming yet dangerously labile. On some mornings, the sting of salt on my skin, the crisp air in my nostrils a jolt to previously tired energies, on others, just another place, another entry for overwhelm. The water pooling around my legs, the sound deafening, the rush impatient. Fierce waves pushing me out, pulling me back in, no matter how deep my heels dig into the sand, looking for an anchor. A constant back and forth. And while they eventually retreat and everything beneath the surface becomes clear, all that once was trickling back into the unknown is picked up by another.

I cannot find the peace I seek in the ebb so closely resembling the flow of alltag and all-leben. I need the stillness and monotony of a lake.

I can already feel it, that preemptive rush of dopamine, endorphins lapping up against my heart-space like the gentle ripples I am anticipating on my skin. I can visualize the bags packed with expectations positioned next to the doorway, crammed with anticipatory images and unnecessary items that will fade in the memory of the day ahead. I can taste the fresh beads of nature summersaulting onto my heavy eyelids, rejuvenating them instantly. My chalky cheeks turned rosy blossoms, as they sprint across the bridge of my parted, tickled lips.

I see the soft morning light, a warm grey still blurred at the edges with dusky darkness, a tentative yellow glow enveloping the world around in its hushed beginnings. I can hear the world slowly stretching awake, first yawns warming bodies with oxygen, as I imagine six feet and four paws tip-toeing down the steps and up the ramps, and onto a clear road awaiting us. Parked cars leaning against the stoop, smiling, their dusty windshields postcards of the imminent future. Wheels ready to roll on and toward dreams come true and subconscious desires fulfilled.

In my mind I’m already there, my entire body in sedate motion as the madrugada breeze whistles through the open windows, circling my orbit like an old friend, checking in, a pat on the shoulder. I’ve got you. My ears already drowning out all musts, drums only opened to a soft, continuous murmur, a sensation much more than an actual sound, a private world interrupted only by a burble when the lungs beg to be refilled. The emotional body eager to submerge again and again, to be wrung out, released of weight, but not of story. One that longs to be heard.

Finally, I've arrived, physically, though it takes my mind a few hours to follow. Even the view of glistening turquoise, a continuous stream of falling stars quietly dancing on the surface of its healing serenity, does not speed my landing. I cannot float until the residues of previous pasts have melted from my brain, pouring down and out into the earth beneath my feet, grounding me. Guilelessly. Until the current in my fingertips, those forever reaching to do and to mend, becomes static. And as I make my way down to the shore, gingerly balancing on rocks and prickly plants piercing the soles of my tired feet, the approach is beginning to feel like a reward. One that should be a right.

The dip of a toe.

Swirls of aquatic dust rising up in clouds, its particles the scrub initiating a fully-body treatment. Shedding the skin of all not-so-distant yesterdays, making way for a lighter today with hairs standing on edge, caressed by the warm silkiness that beckons my body to dive, to fall, to surrender. To be carried. Not just the self, but all and everyone tied to it. For twelve hundred seconds today. I myself become mute, in perfect harmony with the density of the water filling up my ears, and all I can hear is the only sound necessary in this very moment. The sound of my breath and the heart that beats vivaciously and unconditionally for you, and in this instant, just for me.