Mop Brazen Lily

The Only Way Out Is Through

(A POV prompt from the Stream of Consciousness workshop)

Some songs raise you. They rock you to sleep and keep you company in the dark. They are the quiet legacies our subconscious reveres as self fulfilling prophecies.

"Baptism of fire

I never knew what that meant

But now the flames are rising higher

I guess i haven't seen anything yet

Now it's coming down around me

And I am rising up

Like a phoenix from the ashes

Wings across the blue

The only way out is through"

When I was a little girl, I wanted two children. A boy and a girl. I would name them Phoenix and Raven, and then I would have someone to love me forever. For the first dozen years of my life I confused most people, vacillating wildly between unfettered chaotic joy and long periods of dissociative despair. No one knew what to do with me, and that's so very lonely. 

"Forest of fury, kindling of fear

Oh see how dark the woods have grown

After all these years

And now it's coming down around me

And I am rising up

Like a lily from the shadows

Glistening and perfumed

The only way out is through"

My first great love changed his phone number the morning I aborted our pregnancy. 

I always thought of it as Raven, even if I never thought of it as a child. When he broke my heart I moved to another corner of the country and got a himalayan alley cat named Ophelia. We called her Lily. I loved her but she hated me. In fairness, she hated everything.

But when I was with Lily, I wasn't alone.

"All the detours taken never lead you home

What a maze you find yourself in and still alone

Oh you thought it should be easy so the truth eluded you

The only way out is through"

My second great love doesn't know I aborted our pregnancy. 

When we were together he let Lily run away because he was uncomfortable with how miserable she was. He was a nice guy, you see, and she couldn't have been happy inside. I cried when he told me she was gone, and I cried two weeks later when he told me the neighbor's dog killed her. 

I did not cry at the abortion. 

"Baptism of fire 

All happening within

Illusions burn like tall grass 

In a wild and reckless wind

And now it's coming down around me

And I am rising up

Like a great bell resurrected 

Ringing loud and true

The only way out is through"

I did have a boy and a girl. 

I did not name them Phoenix and Raven. 

They will love me forever and I am never alone, they are the lighthouse and the shore. 

But tomorrow I have to tell them I got caught in the breakers. The wind is too high, the water is too dark, the rocks are too sharp. 

Tomorrow I have to tell my children I'm dying. 

My daughter has already lost two fathers to the callous indifference of entropy and when I think about breaking her heart again I can't breathe. She's just now 18, staring down the impossibility of adulthood in this brazen pre post capitalist hellscape.

I don't know how I'm going to tell my son. He's closing his first decade but he just started talking last May. It's strange knowing he'll learn to connect with other people in the days before losing his connection to me.

"All the detours taken never lead you home

What a maze you find yourself in and still alone

Oh you thought it should be easy so the truth eluded you

The only way out is through"

There has to be enough strength left to summon the peace they need me carry. I cannot allow them to endure the trauma of my failing body without witnessing the resiliency of grace. But every morning it takes just a little more time for my fingers to mop the sweat from my brow, and the terror threatens to take hold. And every morning I make the choice to live as if I'm immortal, because the last gift I can give my children is to show them that every single day is worth embracing with the joy of endless tomorrows because not a damn one of us knows which tomorrow will take us.

In every other self immolation I never became the Phoenix, I was resigned to the ashes of altruism. 

This is my final resurrection. 

The only way out is through.