It Was Hot

It was hot. The walls were crafted hours earlier out of old carpets and sticks. We sat on the soft earthy ground in a circle. It was our womb, a place to enter and reemerge new. The stones sat in the middle, sustaining the metamorphosis. It was hot. It was dark. My eyes wide open, all I could do was feel the bodies around me breathing. The sound of water hitting heat filled the silence and a woman began to sing. She chanted a song that felt a million years old. She sang the words of grandmother earth, and kept the beat of grandfather sky. It was hot. It was dark. It was beautiful. I placed my hands upon the soft surface of grandmother earth, I raised my face toward grandfather sky and I asked for the answers. I wanted to rid myself of poison. I listened to the prayers of the brothers and sisters whom I had just met; they wished for health, they hoped for guidance, they gave thanks for life. It was hot. It was dark. It was beautiful. It was terrifying. I wished for the answers, I prayed for peace. I placed my hands on the ground and I begged for the fog to clear so I could remember. They sang songs, and I prayed to be free of the angry poison running through my veins. I begged for guidance, and the universe answered me.

It got cold, the light turned on. We sat in a room after we had discussed life with the very thing that gives us breath. I looked around the room at my elders and I told them what I really wanted to do. They told me to go and do it. All I wanted was to rid my body of the poison, but in that moment, our grandparents chose to show me my path.