My eyes tried to make out what was in my field of vision–straining to make out the familiar from the unfamiliar. “Focus on the red dot–the red dot in the eye of the serpent.” Even as I waited, prepared with my arms out like a ninja poised for a combatant, I was wiring and re-wiring beneath the surface.
If I was in a fantasy, a gruesome thriller, a fantastical drama, a psychological thriller or all of the above, I didn’t pay much attention to whether or not the plot made sense. 
This was my life. This is what I knew and this is what was happening to me. I could not cry. I could not smile. I could not express emotion, nor did I feel emotion like any I have ever known.
I reached into my pocket to discover–or remind myself–that I had nothing on me–nothing. I had left my jacket on a street corner thinking it would identify me. It was now 30 degrees Fahrenheit with a wind chill of about 10 degrees.
I kept insisting to myself that I should not be okay–that the shock to my system–the pain–the psychic pain of being separated from everything I held dear–the incessant asking in my bones for a warm, safe place–would make me emotionally implode. But I could not trust anyone. I would only trust the familiar surroundings of J. and what I had come to call home.
I remember his breath on my face on a cold winter evening that was long passed. I remember how I felt so content–so utterly and completely at one with my surroundings. I wanted to reverse all of this and find myself back with him eating butter pecan ice cream and watching Showtime, while the world passed by. 
It seemed that we were poised to enter the noisy maelstrom of what we had created–here on this dime of earth with the angels pulling us upward and the demons pulling us inward.
Here on this sphere of light and motion, it was so easy to mistake a foe for a friend–a tree for a footstool. It was as if he and I were blowing dust off stones and discovering gems.
In hushed tones, we spoke of the sacred–of those who could bend light with their minds. They were the secret keepers. They were keepers of the Eternal Hope–of the thing we cannot name–the One whose name cannot be spoken.
TO BE CONTINUED
