The Marrow of New Blood

I am settling into my bones, resting in the marrow of new blood. To draw my pen from this fountain, well, it is deep, dripping with the discernment of my future self – a woman devoted to daily life alongside her husband and children. She knows things I haven’t yet discovered.

Hers is the only voice I’ll listen to. She is fun and full of joy, creating what she believes. I feel her here, in this new Southern California apartment, nesting like the red-tailed hawk I watch at the beach, perched in palm trees or on lamp posts, observing simply before effortlessly leaping into the wind – her head still, eyes set upon details only she can see – when she wants to be held from such great heights.

She is listening, too. Her heart is my heart, and the rushing of these red rivers pumping through my womb make sure I am not the same woman twice. I am learning how to breathe life into my time, shortening the days and distance until I become her fully, family in tow. It is nourishing, her company. It always has been.

I love her inner world. It is beautiful and peaceful because it is protected by outrageous love. She honors herself in ways I once outsourced, and so marveling now gives me a responsibility to behold the parts of myself that are reserved for higher powers and purpose without giving them away.

When I watch the way she moves, I recognize the footloose and fancy free spirit that helped me cross the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, and traipse along the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada range to arrive at the Pacific Ocean.

But I also see a reverence for the ground she is walking now, which includes several sets of footprints in the sand, and though she feels a sense of impermanence thanks to the setting sun and rising tides, she also feels forever next to him. Her hands are full of other hands, and this bounty of blood and bone they have received is abundant. I can hear their voices, full of questions – these are the ones she trusts.