About Her Loves..

I was watching her bead today.

Taking apart the old necklaces, hearing the soft tinker of the beads as inevitably a few would hit the floor.

Her fingers picking out what she wanted for her next project, and leaving a mess for me to organize.

She won’t let me take photos of her. Pictures of her have been something she’s hated for years and years-deeply rooted in a recently unearthed trauma. So I watch her. I take pictures with my mind.

And I whisper to an unknown power to keep her alive.

It’s a weird thing to hear “I want to die.” To look into those eyes I prayed for and see the tears-and know it’s not exaggeration. It’s not heat of the moment. It’s a slow drumming that seems to never stop. What’s weird is that I know that pain; so it doesn’t scare me. I know that one day the slow drumming of craving death will faded away and it will be replaced by wanting.

Wanting to live.

Wanting to be better.

Wanting to DO better.

And that wanting is louder and stronger, so on the days when the drumming beat threatens to return she will hear the wanting over it.

I watch her make these beautiful creations and I wonder if she realizes she’s taking something old and making it new. I wonder if she sees the metaphor for her life.

She might not, but I do. And I sit with her as the drum beats, and hum along with my wanting.