Vulnerability ---

--- goes away when you display it.
This is the irony of it.

And so it goes that ...

... I am afraid of you knowing me. Really knowing me. I'm afraid if you found out about my deep, black secrets, those only whispered under my breath, you might find the will and reason to tie me to a wooden stake and burn me, in front of my peers, with good reasons. Good reasons that everyone will agree are good reasons.

They said, "Yes, it was hard to watch her burn up in flames because i can only imagine the pain, but something had to be done -- something had to be done to make an example of how a person shouldn't think."

And with that the community nodded their heads simultaneously, as the blue flame gripped me at my feet, rose up toward my chest, licked the tip of my chin then began to consume my face. As I fell into my own ashes my consciousness looked about me, from the ground. I looked at the departing crowd shaking their heads, sighing with relief, holding each other and some clinching their fists. They walked away, some looking back, as I lay their awaiting my wind to disperse me into everything -- soon I will become, everything. I will become the chill at their shoulder, the quick light to their right, the sudden noise in their silence and the abrupt choke in their throat.

I have become the sigh in their fear. I don't mean to become any of this. It's just that there is nothing else to become. There is nowhere else to go. There's just this place that I've begun to occupy that's somewhere between my reality and their denial.

Physics says that smoke will rise from a burning fire. If the fire doesn't get your flesh, then the smoke will take you from the inside out.

I, like smoke ,have been released from the flame and my spirit liberated from gravity. And they ---- they are still trapped by the very thing they believe keeps them free. And yet somehow, someway they envy my burning, wishing they had the courage to let the flame come for them and deliver their catharsis. But instead, this healing they scream for in their dreams is only experienced by observing someone else's endurance of pain.

There's an envy here put upon me. There's an envy that I have dared to hold the sun in my own hands, like an innocent child that's only interested in the light of it and not the burn.
And this is my vulnerability. It was, indeed standing there in front of them with all of my darkness awaiting the light to absorb me.

vulnerability ...
... goes away when you display it.

This is the irony of it.

My vulnerability died with my darkness. And now the pain of that birth has left me raw, open, sticky and new.
I have entered a paradigm shift and will return on slow moving, distant storm clouds.

I am with the thunder. I am with with forgiveness herself. Eyes darting and wisdom in my mouth -- it has brought me to today.

And today I am fearless - absolutely fearless.

Yet, vulnerability is still a distant sound in a canyon that echoes to me as it bounces against stone walls - reminding me that she's never too far away. Never, too far away.

So, I journey.
I journey.
I journey.
I journe
I journ
I jour
I jou
I jo
I j
I
.