a benediction, maybe

I put out my wish for today’s visit. I want to speak to Grace.

A lake of myriad colors emerges, and I’m standing on a beach covered in sea glass. Already I’m overwhelmed. I don’t know if Grace will arrive, but the sea glass blanket feels like the right carpet for its appearance.

I am barefoot, and I make feet-fists in the hued pebbles, the smooth balls crunching beneath me. So satisfying. My soles tingle from the massage.

I am here, I am listening. If Grace won’t visit, I will speak to whoever shows up.

A woman appears. Floating in on a boat, standing at the prow, even though it is only a rowboat, not tipping over. Her face isn’t clear to me.

Are you Grace? 

I am loud from the shore.

There are no waves in the water, but the boat moves steadily closer.

The presence of another comforts me. I fight the urge to genuflect. The stones on my feet feel too good.

I would like to hear you talk. Have a conversation, if you’re willing.

YES.

I have many questions for her. 

Neither she nor the boat comes any closer. I notice the water has gone darker, deep black and a rich regal blue. No more yellows and reds and greens.

Do you fight Shame? You seem the opposite of Shame to me.

She has one hand cupped in the other, clasped, resting, as if she is about to break into a hymnal.

Have I lost you already?

The balls of my feet and my toes continue to dig into the sea glass, grounding me in this place.

Still standing in the prow, she removes her cape. She wears a wimple.

She sings a note so pure, wordless, it draws a surge of love from my chest, and tears, always tears, from my eyes. I am caught up in it.

She stops singing.

Are you not an action, but a bearing?

She breathes slowly, inhaling. I watch the expansion of her chest, the rise of it.

Her hands are still clasped. I cannot see her legs or feet, only her face and her hands.

I am seized with the idea of tossing, no, hurling a handful of pebbles at her to see what she does.

I know she knows what’s in my head, but she doesn’t flinch.

I squat down, squeeze handfuls of the worn glass into my palms, letting them sift through the sides of my fingers.

As she sings another, quieter notes, I reflect. I don’t even know my motive.

I lay flat in the glass, and flail-swim in the sand. Not propelling myself anywhere, just a face-down version of snow angels. Incapable of conversation right now.

I drop a fistful of the glass over my own head, feeling the rolling off my scalp like dice on the felt of a craps table.

Thank you for tolerating my distractions, my constant returning to myself.

She nods. Her hands are still clasped.

The cat on the couch next to my meditation chair is snoring.

Can you hear that?

She smiles. 

YOU KNOW I CANNOT.

You can’t hear me hearing that?

She reaches out her left hand toward me, palm down. A blessing? Does she want me to walk to the edge of the water and grab hold of her?

A benediction, maybe.

I picture her waving her hand with a great and silly flourish, spinning herself like a top on the prow of the rowboat.

Her hand is where she left it.

WAIT, it seems to say.

Or STAY, like a command to a pet.

Are you Grace? I ask again.

She nods.

Her head expands like a balloon.

I did this to her, I realize in horror.

It floats away from her body, which is still standing on the prow, its arms reaching skyward.

There is a jester’s hat on her rising head. I can see it from above, from a cloud.

I try to speak to her from my new vantage point, like a devil straddling a crescent moon, leaning back, judging everything below it.

Are you okay?

Her face is untroubled.

She wears an expression like this happens all the time.

Your song is so pure. Was it too much for me?

She’s too high up now.

The sky is black. The devil in me changed the day to night. I cannot see the land from here.