Vachon Imagined

Every exodus begins with a death,
though rarely the death people expect.

Not always the drowning of armies beneath the sea,
nor the falling of fire from heaven,
but the quieter ruin:
the slow collapse of the self
that once believed it understood God.

She thought salvation was geographical.
A distant shore.
Another people.
Another language waiting to be conquered by truth.

So she carried the gospel like an eagle carries the wind—
fierce,
certain,
rising above valleys she secretly feared to enter.

But height is not wisdom.

Even eagles mistake elevation for transcendence.

And in the ruins of her certainty,
the owls waited.

Biblical creatures of desolation,
watchers among abandoned temples,
prophets of the night.

They taught her what daylight never could:
that darkness is not always evil.
Sometimes darkness is the womb of revelation.

Then came the serpent.

Not merely the ancient deceiver,
but the ancient mirror.

The unbearable truth that transformation demands shedding,
because no soul enters a new era
wearing its former skin.

Like Israel in the wilderness,
she discovered that freedom is terrifying.

Egypt survives long after one leaves it.

Sometimes Pharaoh still speaks inside the mind.

And so the exodus became inward.

A migration beyond flesh,
beyond fear,
beyond the illusion that life begins and ends with the body.

For the rapture was never annihilation.

It was unveiling.

The crossing of another sea.

The entrance into another era.