Destiny and Compassion

Destiny and Compassion

I sat by the river
She sat down beside me
She was as beautiful as I was and she smiled enchantingly
She knew the future; that was her card
She was a Goddess
I was only human, made of flesh and muscles and nerves
And blood.

She was not cruel
She was as loving and as compassionate as I was
She opened the book and began to tell me what was awaiting me
The book was just a ritual, it was all inscribed there
But she being as smart as I was, needed no book.
She knew it all by heart.
And so she told me,

She told me that anguish and agony and suffering would sit by my side for months and months and for years
She told me that there would be little room for beauty and for joy, they were departing
She told me that there would be no way to be rid of anguish, agony and suffering. And that grief and loss and desperation would come along with them.

I cried and protested when I recognized what awaited me. Hopelessness too, would sit amidst us. I wanted to pull my hair out and I scraped through the flesh of my face with my finger-nails.
I threw myself onto the earth and begged her to change my fate. I told her i would give her an arm, a leg, an eye. I would give her my life now.

She shook her head and her eyes became sad and deep like mine. She told me that I would sit with them all and that over the years I would know them so well. "They will no longer frighten you."

"No", I gasped and cried, the cries being wrenched out of a place within me that I had never known. "No. I want life. I want love. I want beauty and joy and dance and peace and birth. I want life by my side."

She shook her head again and her brows were creased and worried. "You will survive all of what you see."

"NO", I shook and raged " I do not want to survive, I want to live, to celebrate, to create."

And she looked at me and smiled. I saw all that I was to lose and all that I was to suffer. I saw months of agony and desperation. Years of loss and grief. I told her to take my life now. To end it all now.
"You are a Goddess. You can do it. Give me a potion or a pill. A mushroom. Help me end it now. "

She looked at me again and told me that she and I could sit for just a bit longer. I cried and cried and she stroked my hair.
And then she told me "When you are in the furnace, in the chambers, on the alter, being burned and tormented you will not forget your sisters that sit beside you. And when you realize that you can walk and talk again your journey will begin."

"What journey?" I cried out." There will be nothing left of me. And my father? And my mother? And my brothers? What of them?"

And then as though to offer solace, she said "Creativity will live beside you until the day you die. She will speak for you and through you. She will testify. She will teach. She will demand to be heard. She will not survive without you. Compassion, you will survive it all."

And then she kissed me and I let her for I knew that Destiny was not evil. She came to warn me so that I would not lose my self.

Without Compassion all the sisters that I loved and longed for would be lost.

I stayed by that river.

As she had told,
The burning flames devoured and devoured and devoured
As she had told,
My cries for mercy
went unheard
devoured devoured devoured