A Lonely Question: Carrying My Life and Its Value in My Arms

Should I value my life if no one else does?

It is a lonely question.

A question I have returned to repeatedly, as I, for example, severed ties with my family of origin, severed ties with my workplace of two decades, continue to sever ties with people and with institutions who were supposed to value my life but clearly do not.

It is lonely, carrying my life and its value in my arms, like a herder with a single sheep, like a beggar with one crust of bread, like a widow admiring a forlorn flower.

I am the sceptre who rules a kingdom of one. The flame and the branch. The root and the bone. Witch and cauldron.

True, it is an exaggeration, that no one values my life. There are a few individuals, unexpected but welcome pockets of green in an otherwise brutal desert.

But it is hard to enjoy an oasis when it might be a mirage, or when it might be a tiny respite in an ongoing landscape of stone.

It is a matter of renewal, of rejuvenation. Finding my step, my rhythm, my song. 

I change my tempo, I change my moves. 

Soon enough, I won’t care that no one hears what I hear, the music of my becoming and continuing.

Soon enough, I won’t care that no one sees the dance that only I can do, the beating heart that makes me more than a cardboard target or a villainous silhouette.

I wait as the momentum builds, as passion births the river, the rain, the tide.

Passion births the river, the rain, the tide