end.

For those that don’t follow my main tumblr (and for those who do sorry for the double post):

I feel like I told all the stories that needed to be told. I used that project as a way to release things. Maybe I’ll still do it once a week. Or when I feel like it. Or when I have the need. But for now, I think it might be over.

I am going to gather my favorites together and put them and self publish them so for those who have expressed interest in that, I will let you know when that happens (and if you want to let me know if you have a favorite that you think I should include, please do that).

I want to extend a huge thanks to everyone who followed and read and reblogged and left really nice messages. I enjoyed doing this so much, but not as much as I enjoyed knowing that you really liked it and got something out of it. 

[I enjoy working on the photos so much and I’d miss that, so I’ll go back to doing the alchemy project]

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There comes an end. When the need to release is gone, when the demons have been exorcised, when the locks have been picked and the doors reopened. 

There comes a time when the purging is over and the house is clean, the garbage hauled away to a landfill where it will burn like a pyre. You will watch the flames, watch everything turn to ash and when it’s done, when the last smoldering ember turns from red to lifeless gray, you will rejoice.

The stories are over. They’ve all been told.  

There’s an ending:

And she lived happily ever after.

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The sky is an unbroken sea of space. An artist’s brush has painted it something close to empty, a nothingness that lies flat and undisturbed and makes her think of the long corridors of dreams, the hallways that go nowhere yet never seem to end.

An airplane shatters the sky, a fist punching through a delicate painting. She’s thankful for the noise, for the arrival of something other than nothing. The interlude is brief. The plane moves out of sight, taking her company and comfort with it, the hole in the painting closing up behind it.

Something close to empty.

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We’re all just looking for shelter.  We need to get out of the rain, find a canopy that protects us. We’ll find some thin covering and pretend it’s not full of holes that let in the cold we’re trying to outdistance. We take what we can get, we make ourselves believe it’s better than what it is because the search for a safe place wore us out to the point where we no longer care if it lets in the rain, as long as it doesn’t let all of it in. We’re soaked and cold and we’ll insist we’re ok. 

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It seems so inviting.

There’s a little house at the end of the path and she believes that house holds everything she has been looking for. There’s someone there waiting for her. There’s warmth and love and acceptance. 

Everything she knows, everything she has learned taught her that she can’t get to that house. She can see it from a distance. She can yearn for it. She can feel the colors and light reach into her heart and pull her toward it. 

It’s just a picture. It’s just an illusion. 

The shadows will devour her before she reaches the door.

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There’s a tree that grows inside her and its branches wrap around her veins, reach into her heart and lungs. The tree is home to small, black birds that make so much noise she can’t think of anything else but the turmoil that has taken root and when the fog rolls in and embraces the tree she can’t breathe.  She’s being choked by the birds, the leaves, the fog and the bony, fingered braches that fill her throat and keep her from crying out. 

Still, she’s the one who waters the tree, who gives it life, who feeds the birds.

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Watch where you’re going.

He says this to her often. She stumbles a lot, trips over her words and actions and finds herself on the ground, waiting for a hand.

Watch where you’re going, is all he says.

She picks herself up and wonders when her steps forward won’t end with scrapes and bruises. She’s tethered herself to ideas and dreams that are never going to happen. The things that make her want to move forward are the things that trip her up. 

Watch where you’re going. He’s five feet ahead of her when she falls. 

I’m  not going anywhere. 

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She’s driving and the rain is battering the windshield faster than the wipers can swipe it off. The color of the sky reminds her of the ocean and all she can see is the deep, dark blue of a stormy twilight. She’s drowning. In her mind, in the place where she begs for darkness, she is driving into the sea. The waves engulf her, push her down and she imagines hitting the bottom soundlessly, instantly becoming a feeding ground for the strange creatures that lurk in the dark. 

She presses the gas, moves forwards, wonders where the nearest ocean is.

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She’s close enough to the other side that she can hear the music that only comes from places like that. It’s a place where people dance, where the sun always beckons and the rain only comes when there’s a thirst for it.

All she has to do is cross the lake. 

She tries, but she can’t get past the shallow shore. Her feet sink into the bottom. Fingers snake around her feet, pulling her down toward voices telling her to stay. 

She knows those voices. She knows them more than she knows what’s across the lake.

She goes to them.

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She’s waiting for the light.  Barely dressed branches wait with her, arms and fingers outstretched, opening themselves up to the first strands of light. 

They wait. 

It’s not getting any warmer. It’s not getting any brighter.  They can see it, a spot like a smile in the distance beckoning them, but it turns and runs whenever they move toward it. So they stop moving. The burgeoning buds on the branches close up, retracting from the stingy sun. The wait to turn into something better and brighter and more alive is over, again.  

Her heart stands still between winter and spring.