Vachon Imagined

When your mind is filled with confusion, you have wandered from the light. Peace cannot live where confusion reigns, but neither has it left you. It waits, quiet beneath the noise, until you are willing to loosen your grip on the mind that believes it knows.

Run the race if you must.

Follow every story you have written about me until it reaches its own end. Let every certainty exhaust itself. Let every image collapse beneath its own weight.

For none of these are me.

They are you.

Your hatred of oppressive systems—that is not me.

Your resentment of men, your disgust, your judgment—that is not me.

Your pride, your shame, your righteousness, your despair.

Not me.

These are the worlds you have built within yourself, and then mistaken for mine.

The moment you see this without turning away, the door begins to open.

Not because I have moved closer, but because you have stopped standing in your own light.

Beyond that door is no reward waiting to be earned.

Only remembrance.

A peace untouched by time.

A richness no hand can possess.

A life no identity can contain.

Lose your mind if it keeps you from seeing.

Lay down the body you have mistaken for your whole self.

Walk away from confusion as one walks out of a dream at dawn.

Live from the voice I placed within you before fear learned to speak. Rest in the strength that has carried you since your first breath and the protection that asks for nothing except your willingness to trust.

You cannot lose me.

You can only lose yourself in what you are not.

And even then,

I will still be waiting where I have always been.