The Long Return

This offering began during a deep drumming journey nine years ago. The steady rhythm took me into a place I had never seen before, a place where the fire moved with me and something inside me awakened in a way I did not yet understand. When I came out of the journey, I drew everything I had seen and wrote the number 212 in the corner without knowing why.

That moment stayed with me for almost a decade. Recently, I found the drawing again and remembered the feeling of that night, the heat, the movement, the sense of becoming. I wrote these words soon after. And when I recorded them, the final audio landed at two minutes and twelve seconds entirely on its own.

It felt like a confirmation, a circle returning to itself. Like the woman I became had finally met the woman I saw all those years ago.

This offering is for anyone who has ever felt themselves change before they had the language for it, and for anyone who is still growing into the self they glimpsed long ago.

Transcript

I remember the crackle of the earth,

Before I remembered my own name.

I remember stepping into the heat,

Feet dusted with ash,

Breath pulling the smoke through me like a second heartbeat.

There was no me and her,

There was only the one who moved as the flames moved,

The one whose shadows stretched long across the stones,

The one who had waited through a thousand winters for this exact turning.

My hands rose without asking,

My hips answered the drum beating deep inside the ribs of the world.

I could feel the land lifting itself up through my legs,

The old strength curling itself around my spine,

The way vines claim a tree.

My body was memory,

It was smoke,

Spiraling itself open after years of sleep.

I was reborn by the fire,

Each eye of the feather,

An open gate,

A path inward.

I wasn't watching the flames,

The flames were watching me.

And something in me,

Older than grief,

Older than fear,

Older than my own body,

Said,

This is the moment,

Step through,

Become the one who remembers.

I moved because the fire asked,

I breathed because the earth told me to.

I danced because there was no other truth left,

No separation,

No distance,

No story.

I became myself,

The woman I had forgotten,

And the fire welcomed me home.

Reviews

That was exquisite. It was just what my heart needed. Thank you!