And She Will Rise

I wonder if I will be nothing but a spectator in her life. Such beauty as she seems distant, like a faraway constellation I can’t touch but can draw silently in my heart. It is in that quandary I wander, staring blankly into that fantasy, uncertain if I am to ever speak her name in this life again.

Bathing in that thought, I sit by a waterfall, my feet playfully kicking through the foam. Her visage reflects brilliantly in the colorful mists swirling before my eyes as my heart begins to race. How I long to take her face in my hands and kiss her lips, patiently reminding her that it will all be okay. The vision, however, fades as I extend my hand to reach her. It’s all I can do to whisper an oath of surrender.

She has her dreams and swears most of them have been broken, left scattered on the fields around her. I tell her I see flowers blooming there but she will have none of it. “They aren’t flowers, they are weeds,” she says. My heart breaks silently then, my tears sown besides the places where her pedals beg to bloom.

I can do nothing to make the fruit sweeter or the flowers brighter. I can only sit in silence, wishing away the demons knowing full well they may always win the day. This is not my battle, nor my war, as again I am reminded I am nothing but a spectator here.

There is hope, however, for a moment of reckoning. In my prayers, the Sun rises and, suddenly, she hears the morning songbirds give rhythm to the silence. She will feel the harsh ground beneath her soften under the plush Spring promise. The colors that dot the surrounding landscape will set her eyes afire, and she will know the promise contained in all she once thought broken.

She may pause and offer a breath of prayer, sending her sigh high into the Heavens. I will hear her then and know it is my time to marvel once more. I will make my way through the thorns and thickets, over jagged hills and frigid mountain peaks, just to feel her prayer. I will arrive, and before me across the field she will embrace her power, feel love surround her, and she will rise.

There is no greater sense of awe within a man than that of a woman rising. He can find no greater truth than the rawness of her power. Her wings spread, he bows his head in reverence for he knows that his life is owed to such a woman, and his mind is set on defending this hallowed ground. She will be his sanctuary and he her place of respite.

She will look him in the eyes and he will melt. She will promise him that she is a wretched storm and he will say, “Then let me sit where there is thunder.” She will caution, “There will be waves and winds and battering seas.” He will respond, “Let’s take the wheel of our ship, batten down the hatches and ride the waves together.” It is not the fury of the storm that they shall remember. Their memories will live in their choice to weather it. Together.

He will not see her in need of his shoulder but it will be there should she need to rest. He will not give rise to furrows of sadness on her brow, and would rather taste her kiss then feel her tears. She will walk with him to the places hardest to reach, and rest entwined under the stars amid the highest peaks. They will make love until their sweat fills the basins of the valleys they used to wonder. They will know defeat at times, but they will not know surrender. Ever.