Underworld

After many long years spent roaming the earth,

I was invited beneath her surface for a long rest.

As I lay buried under endless layers of soil and stone

I feel a current, pulsating through my being

soft and rhythmic, like mothers heartbeat in the womb

or the steady pulse of a drum.

I follow the rhythm inward 

until I cannot feel my body anymore.

I’m being eaten from the inside out

becoming who I am, who I’m not,

shapeshifting through the endless corridors of my imagination.

Time is nonexistent here, completely imperceivable to me. 

Suddenly, the earth cracks open and vomits my body back to the surface.

She tells me I’ve been in the dark long enough.

I open my eyes only to discover, 

I cannot see,

I am blind now

from years hidden under the earth,

my eyes are no longer accustomed to the light.

My pupils have disappeared,

and all thats left is iris.

There is no longer a window to my soul,

it turned inside out and swallowed itself whole.

and so I roam the earth, 

eyes open on the inside

visible only to those who have made the journey

to the world beneath

the world of symbol, of spirit.

How are we to navigate the outside from the lens of the internal?

It’s a puzzle we cannot solve,

but dissolve into.