You Seek Water
Now all that evil becomes nourishment.
[ as originally published in “Nourish”, a zine on taking care of others, yourself, or no one at all]
When the great hum of the bloodletting was done, I felt the void left by its cut. I felt the shape of the knife now manifest as absence— As if to be the mold of my wound. And I took all the blood that was spilled, And I poured it into a reliquary. Now all that evil becomes nourishment. Now all that crimson tide becomes clear. Now all that garden of ash shall bud and sprout— For this is the rite that turns blood into water, And this is the spell that calls the evasive light, So that all may be overcome with the bloom of reconciliation. No, I find no purpose in the wallowing— Good is only a reflection on evil, And the reconciliation of good and evil is its product. In its sum, you find the only truth that there is to know, Writ large, carved into the shape of thy flesh:
You seek water.
You seek water, and you care not of its origin— Where it comes from is none of your concern, for the great rite shall purify it, And the toxins shall all be flushed out of its body, And what was once poison will be sustenance, Hydrating the body, Taking rot and scourge and making nourishment— Seizing death and shaping it into life!
And as blood becomes water, As dark becomes light, I wonder, How can all my love be reconciled with my fear? But reconciliation is not born of logic, or answers, It is understood or it is not, It need only be! Water is all there is to know, and so you know that you seek it— You seek fire melting the ice off of stone, You seek its product— Meltwater quenching flame in the open air— You seek cleansing, You seek chaos, You seek only the balance and the solution between— You are progeny of neither god nor demon, You are the progenitor of the soul, And the soul is only the cascade of the great wave— Good and evil in its essence, Real and unreal in its understanding, Innocent and guilty, and yet neither Vessel and soldier, and yet neither Both and neither subject and subjected— Altogether, the current— Flowing through the vast canyon, At the mercy of all, and all draws breath at the mercy of thee— For you are blood and you are water and you are all the contradictions— You will never make sense to anything at all. And as you eat from the tree of life, The profane becomes holy, The venom in your wound becomes salve— And all that blood, sitting in the reliquary, Shall quench the thirst of a desiccated world.
