The Madonna Secret

“Do not worry about who will understand. It will serve to awaken those who are ready. My story is made of soil and water and wind and pain.

Have you ever rested in the water, the breath in your lungs keeping you afloat, gazing up at the flat sky above you until you are not sure you have ever been human? You

What does it feel like to give birth to life? It feels like losing a life. And then holding it in your hands.

Birth screams rupture time. They go forward and backward. I sent my scream forward. To my great-granddaughter. It has yet to reach her. But I know it will.

What a burden I am to you, I thought. Thank you for your service. Perhaps someday, somewhere else, you will ride me.

My prayers no longer held any relation to those I had recited with my father as a child. They were small and personal. Pebbles thrown into the river. Words murmured over the cooking fire and sung into a puddle of rainwater.

Each inhale was a lifetime, each exhale a dreamless sleep that lasted centuries.

I was bigger than Miriam. I was many Miriams building toward some greater height. A height I could not yet see.

This was my spirit that had existed before the garden. Before the flood. Before mankind.