CONFESSION ZERO

(Photo by Michelle, my lovely love...) When I first heard one of the many variations of "Everyone dies alone" I thought, of course I die alone. I now see that particular truth differently- Everything I leave behind is that which is not and never was mine, of me, but not me, that which, after death, I'm unable to retreat from. I’ll do myself a great disservice if I carry my body away from life and leave only my hands to suffer and writhe in a pact of willful separation. With self left suffocating, buried beneath other’s thoughts, other’s slaughter, other’s guilt, other’s sins, other's beliefs, all packed beneath my own personal greed, the void that has no love, and without hands, is unable to dig out from under the rubble, unable to remain loving, remain important, unless I recognize and believe in the whole of Love. Full life has no use for Love’s spirit that's tossed in the ground never to dance again. (Thank you, Love. Thank you, Breath. Thank yo

(Photo by Michelle, my lovely love...) Can I, a man of flesh and bone and spirit and Love, recognize my image within my kind’s present carnage? Shriek and howl! Screech my protests higher now! The hymn of peace be upon the eartH, Love visible through the belief in creation... Shouldn't I long to walk in goodness? Shouldn't I strive toward the solemn directives of creation and Love? I should strive to walk in goodness. A man, yet capable of walking in warless goodness... So how could I have ever known of such creeping deceit. (Yet, they are my brothers and sisters eternally, nonetheless... nonetheless. I'm sorry, brother for ever having thought it was my place to question your personal belief, never having had my own. I humbly apologize.) I have, I would imagine, known only that which was and is knowable... And then I began raging my hunger, leaving myself parasitic, turned by my greed. I chose my beast and I have fallen, fallen so far away that the garden li