among the roots and underground

i am overwhelmed. i am so overwhelmed that capitalizing sentences seems futile. i am operating basically and fully at the same time. i am overcome.

i cannot believe the things i have just witnessed--the love of a family that stretches wider than blood, deeper than anything i could have ever imagined for myself or any person. 

i have somewhat returned to my mishap of a room, after the single most flooring experience of my life. beyond a diagnosis. beyond fears of death. it dispels all these things. sitting in a room with these people, i was replaced by a cup overflowing. 

i am surrounded by beauty that i don't understand. i am filled with things i don't comprehend. i fill up, i spill over. i want to kiss the world on the mouth.

it seems wildly unfair to me that i should have this. it is too much for just a person. words are failures. awe, shock, wonder, amazement, beauty doesn't even begin to describe what i am currently experiencing. it is too much. it is too much.

i want of nothing.

it is holding me together, your love.

i feel the legs of our community like roots burrowing underground and covering a lot of land. we stretch out wide and fan ourselves and grasp the earth, holding the meaty silt and clay along the edges of the water table, sipping, climbing, crashing, spilling over rocks and boulders, strings of granite and quartz for miles. we do not tire, this is our purpose. we grow. we feed off the land, we drink the deep waters and refresh ourselves for our tumultuous journey. we struggle through sand and dry climate; we spit out seeds. we germinate after drought, we pop up here and there with tender shoots, we leave tubers and legumes in memory of times spent. displaying our delicate variegated leaf, we rest a ways next to rivers, dig deep under hills and grasses. we twine together to push through gravel, rustling the surface of pavement and cracking the calm exteriors of concrete. we cause tears and laughter, aches, scrapes, bruises and bones. we smile wide with our arms, jutting out and upward, wrapping, holding, loving--we climb beanstalks and houses, brick and shingle alike, we slip through open doors and cover closed ones. we listen with our eyes, see with our hands, and feel with our throats--vibrating a hum smallish yet rising. we endure. the damage we have seen is behind and beyond and overrun with us. we stampede with such force to reduce rock to rubble. we shake our fists at disbelief. we move for a light, we trace our waxy yucca fingers along the edges of the earth and delight in our reflection in the still pools. we feel the heat of the pods bursting, petals laughing, feet digging in and squirming. when pulled up, we gleefully shake off the chilled damp muck in summer, the cold evening dirt pressed in the space between our limbs. we are heat, we are cool, we are saturated by the sun. we are the kings and queens of the lithosphere, cracking codes and spanning ages, spilling pomegranate gems like it’s nothing, decorating the fields of our bodies with jewels and fine furs and loam, for the joy and delectation of herbivores who need us, sacrificing, seeding, replanting ourselves across the fields and under the strands of the willow tree. we sway in breezes and break up and move the earth, we squint our tender eyes at the low sun, we gladden with Spring and wait patiently in snow. we are the organic engine of Persephone, holding her fennel staff. we sisters brothers mothers aunts, tethered together, ornate, flushed, crackled brown purple blush. inch by inch we span the land, hand in hand, stretched, marred, tanned. we spurt up for no particular reason. we toil and gripe and develop small flowers. striped and spotted and varied in hue, we swell fruits at the end of our arms. we ripen. we praise the land. we laud the ants and worms. while bees carry out their sacred mission, our winged seeds catch the wind.