Standing in the Shadow of my Sun

In the beginning is the end.

T.S. Eliot

Many days, 5094 to be precise, have passed since my Sun set on my world. I stood outside my house in an empty field, crusty daffodils peeking through the cracked dirt beneath my feet. I watched silently as my Sun snuck behind the moutainous silhouette, saguaros reaching toward the sky, as a tether against its descent into the night.

I could not resist it's leaving. I was powerless. I gazed at it, seduced by the pain of losing something so beautiful. I wanted to run toward it, but I was suspended in time and space. The crowning vestige of my Sun vanished and left me there in a blackness so black that even my own hands, the ones that would have held her body against mine, were indistinguishable from the nothingness that surrounded them.

Lost. Truly. Lost. Rivers flowed. Birds hunted their prey. Trees dropped their leaves. Snow fell. Children laughed. And cried. Daffodils found water and the cracked Earth drank until it had it's fill. Clocks ticked, tides rolled, and time marched.

I asked for the world to stop. But nothing stopped that day. Save me.

When I was ready to surrender, I explored my world of darkness. I could not stand there in that field - for that Sun on that day in that place was no longer mine in this way. I was now an explorer of nothing and everything, birth and death, past and the future, heaven and hell, the day and the night.

And so, I walked the night. And walked. And walked. Miles and miles, feet bare against each stone and crevice. I came upon strange creatures. Some would glow just enough for me to find my way to the next place. Others, not many, would take my hand awhile, help me over the big rocks on the path and across the wide rivers that carried ones who came before down helplessly. A few, not many, even carried me when I grew too weary for another step. Many more, gremlins of the night, would trick me with breadcrumbs and promises, leading to even darker places, with wider rivers and eternal canyons.

Until up, up, over the horizon, peaking over my Sun's grave, there was my Moon. Just a sliver, a fragment, but enough light to get me to safety.

And I rested in its reticent glow, still wishing and longing with every cell in my body for that Sun on that day in that place. The one that was no longer mine in this way... until, finally, golden slumbers filled my eyes.

T.S. Eliot goes on to say that, "at the end of our exploring, we will arrive where we started, and we will truly know this place for the first time."

I awoke, salt on my tongue, moving ever-so-slowly. Like the transposed caterpillar emerging from her taut cocoon, sore and and scrambled, like the between station channels in the white noise of the world. I reached my arms, stretched to the sky, and looked over the horizon to see that I was standing in the field, my field, outside my house. Beneath my aching feet, daffodils were peeking through the cracked dirt. I watched, breathlessly, as my Sun ~the One of a different time and place and moment, yet mine still~ began its resurrection from behind the mountain top that had once been a place of internment. I watched its ascent breathe life- pure and unadulterated life- into the dirt and the trees and the birds and the stones and the clouds and the bugs and the children and the buildings and the world. With me. And you. And the presence of your absence.

And I truly knew this place, for the very first time.
In my beginning is my end.

In my end, my life began.

...for V and R