The Soul Whispers

Deer Guardian (Jessi Ochse)

A remembering, where the death of a personality gives rise to something else. You may read each stanza as a whole, or may skip lines within a stanza, or rearrange them within a stanza, each expressing a shared feeling.

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I am no one special
Born among the multitude who chase heroes and villains
And wonder what that means, to feel as they feel
We, without feeling

We post a daily digital illusion of that character we want others to see, to make us
To make us rise from the dead
As he did, or she did—your hero
Your hero shining on the phone’s screen

But the hero does not rise from the lights, but from the dark
And only through death
So die while yet you breathe
That when your spirit becomes a drop in the well of anamnesia
It will be as cool refreshment to the traveler across the river of bloodlines

Now is the time to live the paradox of two lives with integrity, without dissociation
One here, and one everywhere
I walk with you, and love you more than you can know
And so the creation then becomes greater than the creator, doing what I cannot
Not know, to have a Name

I crafted this mask with your help
As I, too, was crafted
To be
Beheld and beholden
And then to die

Send your hero to their death

And in death allow my gifts and my curse
To mingle with you more intimately than
when I loved you in the flesh
Consumed by the senses, the animal spirit remembers
The soul whispers

[image credit: Jessi Ochse]