Not yet to dry land

Did you really want to stay in that place? 

Content in your stance at the overextended halfway mark?

Is that where you thought peace would visit you? 

Is this the place you thought you'd find a long awaited exhale?

Could that really be the final resting place you'd choose?

Is your idea of heaven so compromising?

Now you're on the boat. You're in that storm. That storm everyone warns you about. The inevitable and juicy, life-threatening, emotion-amplifying, painful painful painful painful, delicious, dreamy yuck and sea-sickening place. The ocean of the present. Nothing to do but wait. Nothing to do but sit. 

Land is nowhere near. You are entirely aware of just how in the middle of it all you are. There are only two options: 

1. Jump ship

2. Endure

Jumping ship is sudden death and endurance is an extensive journey that involves some of the greatest suffering your heart has felt hitherto. 

So you're on the boat and you decide you'll stay. Living over dying. Even when living feels nothing like living at all. But you swore to yourself that no matter the yoking, the sweat, no matter the guilt, you'd stay afloat. So you do. And it works.

The horizon gleams and the Garden of Eden drifts closer each second. The land is promising, the air sweet. All salt has dissolved. Oils applied, fruit picked off the trees. Nectar dripping off your lips. You inhale. You exhale. Inflate. Deflate. Let go and become. 

"So this is the feeling? This is what I actually wanted? Is this the fulfillment of a fantasy sought after? Is this untouched and utterly purified inner peace?"

You died in the ocean but a woman waits for you at the apple tree. You have the feeling that the two of you are not separate. You look so different. You feel so far away from one another and yet somehow she looks at you like she completely understands it all. She knows of the deep, salt-ridden sea. She knows of the sting of the air. Her own face has met such an alarming sun. There is a rich history of the water in every pore she's got. 

You want to run into her embrace and yelp of the terror of the travel. Her comfort would make it all worth it. Just to have someone witness the fact that you made it out alive. You faced currants so deadly and abrasive and now you are completely purified. You have no words to say to her.

When you look into her eyes, you know that she knows everything. 

All you want to do is collapse and weep.

She places her fleshy palms on each side of your face and says,

"May you never compromise your heaven again."

You drink her water. You find your way home. You leave alchemized.

Did you really want to stay in that place...?