I think I finally have an answer to that age old debate.
Not the chickens.
Soulmates.
Whether they come into your life like a tsunami and fuck shit up or like a gentle rain that washes the old away and nurtures the ground you walk on.
Western philosophy says natural disaster. Eastern says just naturally.
For the longest time I longed for the west, I went there and it felt exciting yet familiar.
I am now leaning to the east. I have never gone that way before.
That is where the sun comes up and everything starts over again.
Yes, this.
I am not going to sit here and call a man my soulmate. It’s so overused, it doesn’t mean anything anymore.
I also take issue with the phrase ‘love of my life’. I will not know who that is until the end. I have loved with my whole heart, many versions of love by many versions of me and that is enough.
Not once did I not try.
I have soul sistas and funk soul bruthas galore, I know how that feels, to be completely and utterly yourself in a room full of people (or just with one person) who just get you and love you and cheer on your every move. And sometimes they have to shake the baby and say ‘snap out of it.’ depending. Tribe is overused too. They are just my people.
I have met men who knocked me over with a look. Others who created storms that raged in my body with a single touch. I have been torn apart and held together with their words and eventually their silences. And in all likelihood I have probably done the same to others.
I have had all manner of butterflies in my belly. Young innocent ones that woke up with some carnal need I had no understanding of and the excitement of the unknown caused them to flutter and flirt with disaster after disaster. I have had ones with razorblade wings, hard cutting things that threatened to tear through me responding to fear, words I wanted to believe but I knew deep down they weren’t true.
Or when I looked at one in a parking lot, moments after a first kiss and said “oh honey, you are going to shred me and I am going to let you” he tried to argue, tried to volunteer for the position of getting torn apart, but those weren’t my words, those were wings whispering the truth and they spilled off my tingling tongue before I could stop them.
The butterflies have spoken.
Can’t take it back now. It just is.
And it was.
And it was worth it.
Before that moment I had suffered a long absence, like my butterflies were really cicadas and went dormant for extended periods of time. About 17 years give or take. With the occasional one showing up out of time and place sang for a brief moment on some sticky summer night.
God I missed them.
And now these.
These are new.
Lepidopterists have yet to categorize these gossamer winged things.
Out of the blue my dearest Brother Matthew messaged me. Poetry of Monsters is his.
He said
“It’s right there, waiting. Hold true and it will be clear. Love you”
He wasn’t wrong. I was still smirking and smiling at my phone from being claimed moments earlier.
Two words.
My girl.
That I am.
With this new one came a new breed of butterflies.
Not nervous, not sharp or nauseating. Not beating warnings against my belly nor striving to be touched and being denied.
The opposite.
Strong, silken, languid caresses. Matching the ones he was writing on my skin while I sat in his lap.
Wings in the lower part of my belly whispering yes, this, here, him over and over.
Same thing murmured when I came around the corner at the restaurant and laid eyes on him the first time.
Something in me exhaled with relief.
I think it was my soul sighing.
The cicadas are awake.