The One Deep Inside Your Chest

 

Step back and watch your body, being a body.

Watch an arm move through space, watch an ankle turn.

 

Watch your body, as it likes things or doesn’t,

as it gets scrapes and bruises

as the skin darkens and falls into folds.

 

Step back to the perimeter of the theater

and watch your body on the stage.

 

Recede to that quiet knowing:

For now, I am associated with this body —

not inside it, or one with it —

just associated, for a time.

 

Casing. Only casing.

Be kind to the casing if you like — put oils

on it and nourish it and move it to keep it stronger, for a time.

Never become it. There, only suffering.

 

Can you feel the one deep inside your chest, who has existed forever?

Who has made a thousand journeys?

Who feels like a comet in the dark?

The inner filament?

 

I know, no one ever told you.

I know. It wasn’t the name you learned to write at school,

but that one is you.

That one is the real you.

 

– Tara Mohr

 

photo credit: Jack Catalano