Escaping Grace

Fresh tears are whipped from my eyelashes as I strain my windburned face toward lead-bottomed clouds. Weary and trembling, I climb the last reach by memory, slide my fingers into their assigned divots and exhale.

I wait without breathing.

Before long the urge to see her again provides strength, and I flex and point my toes into nothingness. I can sense the light above, alluring, lifting my eyes. Just a glimpse of her beauty has my heart snapping a quicker rhythm, electrified promises pulsing along my skin. So gorgeous, this Earthly Life. Relief fills me until I am almost complete, and Sorrow takes the gap.

I’m sorry I left you. It won’t happen again.

Legs dangling, something warm nips my bare ankle.

Years pass, the affair with Reality forgotten, and I shrink smaller. Muscle memory takes over as I dangle unmoving, slowly becoming one with the cliff. Minutes, days, my eyes are fixed on Life. There are no changes, no Seasons, no Growth and no Sting. For decades I sleep, eyes open.

Then, the Disruption. Unexplained, uninvited, something in the air. I am compelled to look away, and I see my own body from the outside, a clinging bug, disappearing into ancient tree bark. The vision calls out, reaching a dormant seed of Faith. A wet green tendril of wonder breaks through the Numb.

Could He still love me, even like this?

My sight returns and I wonder if the Disruption happened at all. I fix my eyes on her beauty once more. A flicker, insignificant, briefly crosses her shimmering light. My heart slips once with curiosity and I look before I can stop myself.

The flicker materializes and takes shape as Reality swoops down, landing heavily with a mangled foot on each of my shoulders. The rocks grown around my hands crumble away at his massive weight, and I scramble to regain my place, knocking a spray of my home into the void.

“Leave me!” I scream. I’m startled by how small my voice has become. “She’s my Life!”  

But I know why he’s here— my heart has recalled our affair.

Reality crouches still behind my neck, considering. Pressing thick fingers at the base of my skull, testing, he works his way in and I go dizzy. Sweat beads above my lip. Shaking my head violently only proves my fear–he’s already rooted. He prods deeper until I taste bile. Satisfied, he leaches around to my chest.

Dread squeezes and I know what’s coming. Helpless to stop him, I dare not lose my hold, my sightline.

Working methodically now, Reality lays out his tools next to my heart. One flawless mirror. Scarred leather journal, heavy and sopping with inked confessions. The deadbolt, bent too far out of shape to be useful. Glass jar filled with secrets, next to it, and worse, The Empty Jar. A stack of snapshots grows tall– each of a different flame at the precise moment it lost oxygen. Horrified, I hang, left arm aching, senses hijacked and raw, the smell of some buried memory emerges and rises like rotten forest bed and goes under again. My body is nothing more than an abandoned chrysalis.

Deep under my ribs, I ache. The ache sharpens, turns itself and I gasp at feeling Pain without Numb. The clouds break away- the light changes, sharpens, searches and pierces my every fragile spot.

I look to my beloved brilliant fickle shapeshifting Life, silently begging for help. Her beauty is so bright my eyes pool, vision blurs. Regret inhales deeply and my cheeks are wet. I don’t want to let her go.

Please.

So enticing and sickly sweet, she ignores me and I can’t help loving her. Her beauty roils now, her sweet smell sticks and gags like boiled-down pomegranates.

Transformation complete, Reality emerges and hovers, knowing. Our eyes meet through my tears. His hold no sympathy, no shame, only Truth. Knowing is worse than any pain he’s caused, I’ve fooled myself into comfort for so long.

Resolve skips giggling down the middle of my sweat-soaked back, boot heels returning my spine to dust. She flings herself, still laughing, into the chasm and is lost.

Rest shares space with me for a moment and whispers in my ear, “Close your eyes, my love.” Her cool breath kisses my face and though I’m sure I can’t, I obey. Blue letters swirl behind my eyelids, shifting and passing and dissolving. I try to let them form words but the effort is too much. For a moment I feel the feather-light touch of Peace and I let my head drop to my chest.

Life raises an eyebrow and slowly turns. She’s been watching.

Bending, she gathers up her veil of light, and with great relish throws it from herself. Her body, beneath, is wretched. Heaps of False Truth. Gallons of Lust pump through each pulsing vein, great teetering towers of Greed form her skeleton. Everything bare and cheap, each carefully constructed comfort discarded with her veil.

All of these lies I’ve tried to hide, uncovered. I can’t bear to see it. I let go.

Falling back, gravity builds hunger and pulls me down, spinning me ever faster. Layers ruffle and detach, shed one after another, disappearing into the dark moist air. Finally, finally, there are no layers left to shed and I feel myself slowing, drifting, floating down. I land softly, naked, unsubstantial and loved, on His scarred palm.

“Welcome home, my child.”