Tornado

FULL MOON

July 2020

She sits in the white chair in her studio, light streaming through the open skylight, wind-fingered trees whisper, creating moving shadows, dappling the room with an underwater sway. It is what others call a beautiful day. For her it is another grief day and it is the hour of her painting Sangha. 

She wishes she could just find the precise words to describe the state of her heart, her mind, but nothing suits. Vacant, dark, weighted, gouged, scoured, bereft. Bereft, to separate, comes closest. Cleaved.  From herself, from him.  From the life she knew.  Her heart is thick like swamp mud and storm clouds.

It is two and a half years and it is still hard to breathe.

In heavy movements she squeezes thick worms of cerulean blue, white, grey, and turquoise paint directly onto the canvas.  Taking up the knife, she slathers the paint in swift and angry movements across the surface, each stroke revealing a gathering storm, mounting the sky, engulfing clouds and wind and rain, until a whirling and fierce old storm woman with wild reckoning eyes appears over the corpse-like body of the grieving woman, laying prone under Her power.  

The Old One feeds on her heart, sucking into chaos what life once meant, the passion, the blood and bones and love, swirl up in the suck, leaving her empty but for the unbearable pain of that emptiness.

Take the pain too she prays, take me into the howl of the wind, the turbulent twisting dance of loss. Obliterate me.  

Oh no, not yet.  This is not punishment.  This is Holy, says the wind.  This is for love, says the rain.  A tornado of love, says the Old Woman of the storm.  This is your offering.  And mine to you.  Bow down. Trust me.