Why Am I Here?

Sometimes I know
and sometimes I don’t.
Sometimes I’m afraid to ask
and sometimes the answer simmers,
then boils,
in my belly.
Sometimes I rage against being told: by whom?

Myself?
Because I quit.
I don’t want it.
Any of it.
I’ve changed my mind,
after all.

Here is some place and Here is no place
and Here I love and Here I hate
and Here knows me and I know Here
and Here is everywhere and Here is

Near…
She whispers in my ear
when no one else is listening,
as the moon keeps vigil,
steady in the dark. ‘Stay’,
She says, and then I cry.
‘Stay’, She repeats. ‘Do not die.’

How many are the times
I have dreamed of dying
rather than of being
Here.

But now I Know,
sometimes like a pounding drum
and sometimes like a trickling of delight,
that I was never
really ever
Here.
What I hated, feared and fought was not
Here.

Here is a new place,
a familiar place,
a warm face –
my own face – seen
for the first time,
in a mirror unlike any other.

Here is my lover

Intimate
Subtle
Abiding
Eternal

Here is where I wish to be
more and more
simply
me.

(March 2024)