The fire came
before I knew it was a door.
It burned through the rooms
where I had kept
my small and frightened self,
the one who needed
to be certain,
to be safe,
to be saved.
At first, I called it loss.
I begged the flames
to leave me something
I could still recognize.
But the heat kept asking:
Will you come with me?
In response:
I began to dance.
A full-throated, open bellied, flaming hair dance.
Not because I was brave,
but because standing still
was another kind of death.
I danced over the hot embers
of the life I thought was mine.
With every step,
another falsehood fell away:
the old stories,
the careful disguises,
the belief
that I was separate
from the One who made me.
The fire did not destroy me.
And, no one was coming to help me.
It burned clear through
the walls I had built
between God and myself.
And when there was nothing left
to protect.
No dancer,
no fire,
no distance.
I became one
with the Infinite.
Only then
did I understand:
the flames
had been love
all along.
