Soultime

I could not see

with your protracted arrival

Counting 42 hours of labor,

counting seconds of contractions,

Counting minutes between waves

clocks and monitors ticking,

8 days overdue

That I was giving birth to my own soultime

You seemed to know this already

As if you’d been here before me

with your eyes as dark as space

Sight that looked through me

Seeing everything from before now

Seeing everything to happen after now

I could not see the soultime coming at me in glacial speed, arriving on waves of interminable grief, ocean deep

I could not see the light of your arrival dissolved in the stars light

sent millions of years ago

I could not know of this soultime

As I marked my weeks, months

up to your due date with appts, ultrasounds, bloodwork,

maternity leave paperwork,

clock time punching in & out of hospital

Moving my bookmark through the weeks of What to expect when you are expecting

Marking the time, the textbook pregnancy

I could never have expected

How your breath would make seconds stretch for centuries

How your last breath would enter me

In ways I am still revelating

As if your soultime re-emerged with mine

Soultime with no beginning, no end

As if in your death….time swirled

And you became my ancestor—

Birthing me

Birthing me into an alternate universe

From which I would not return

Having absorbed this one into it

I now live forever in this soultime

Birthed from that which I birthed

Breathed from that which I breathed

I now see, what you see—

Inside Universal LOVE

without beginning or end🌀

** in honor of Julia, on the anniversary of her lifetime august 8-august 28th, 2002. This tiny being who never spoke has been my greatest teacher in loving in the impermanence of life. She is my cosmic daughter, my light, my muse. She speaks through me now in my poetry as prayer.