A prose piece/meditation on the role of secret hidden desires, secret lives, that haunt us and are left unlived because we are afraid to become that which we love and that which we are.
Here is the text for those that would like to read along:
I wasnt always invisible. No. I recall when I was young learning how to take tiny bits of myself and fold them up all small and all and tuck them into the cracks and crevices of my dreams. Or later learning how to hide larger parts among the pages of my journals, or contained in those grace notes of blue sky dancing amidst the speckled leaves of light sunlit by spring. And so slowly I turned more and more translucent, until at last, invisible, I floated there, just behind the gaze of the young boys eyes, mistaken as a kind of inward distance or for a moment glimpsed as a sudden sense of an almost unbearable sadness. There, floating like some weightless ghost, behind the eyes of the boy I haunted.
And sometimes, late at night, if you listened closely, you could hear my voice whispering there:
I want to grow up and be beautiful.
I want to be like the other girls my age.
I want to play hopscotch and set the table for tea.
I want to marry the boyyou know, that one, there.the one I had a crush on.
I want to smell like my Mother, her skin fragrant with LAir du Temps or Shalimar.
I want my smooth body to blossom with soft breasts and to feel the moist folds of my desired sex.
I want my face to gain the soft and wrinkled wisdom of my Grandmother.
I want.
I want to tell you my deepest secrets.
I want to show you where I hide.
and where I hurt.
I want to tell you about my fears and my deepest pain.
I want you to love me.
I want you to see me.
We all carve out our secret caves and hidden fortresses; our buried treasures and magical worlds. And there we entrust those parts of ourselves that are the most fragile and delicate, those parts most in need of protection and safe passage: the gossamer winged yearnings of our hearts and dreams. The intricate lace of our love. That is where we put those things we are most afraid to tell, afraid they will not be accepted as they should be accepted as sacred gifts of our Self.
So gather up your splintered scattered secrets, the hidden pieces of your heart, the long lost dance of your desires. Round them all and give them breath. What are you afraid of? Let it go let it go. Now is the time for life and for living. Now the time for the visible. And when we meet to be able to say: How simply wonderful it is to see you.
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