A Different Answer

She said to me,
“If you want a different answer,
You’re going to need to ask
Different questions.”

What is this world?
What is this world?
What world is this?
Lingers on morning fog
And dusky evening sky.

As if the mind could grasp
An answer that was real.

As if the pathway to healing was
A puzzle to solve,
A problem to fix,
And not a wholeness to feel.
To heal is to make whole.
Healing is wholing.

Healing is wholing.
Healing is wholing.
And wholing is possible
Because I am
All of me.
Because we are
All of us.
Because all is.
Healing is possible because
All is
Always.

I lie down and feel the pulse of pain
Coursing through me and
Why is this happening?
Why is this happening?
Why is this happening?
Running through my head.

Then, a shift.
From Why is this happening?
To How can I move forward?
A new possibility.

When I let go of the urgency of my body,
I begin to sense the lightness
Of dissolving into everything
And nothing at the same time.
Is this what it feels like at the end?

When I close my eyes,
The screen flickers,
And I see dancers in beige linen
Twirl across a raw oak floor.
Jubilant, comes as an answer
To a question I hadn’t even posed,
Welling tears in the chalice of my heart.

When my daughter asks,
“Do you like when I’m at your house
Or do you like when I’m not at your house?”

I tell her that I like it when she’s at my house
And also when she’s not.

I know it isn’t the answer she’s looking for.

“That’s literally the most you response,”
she counters with an eye roll and a laugh.

I tell her that of course I prefer when she’s with me,
But she asked a different question.