You were born as a river
believing yourself a cup.

You spent your days
trying to hold the sky still,
forgetting the storms were your teacher.

This forgetting—
they called it depravity,
they called it sin—
but it was only the arrow
missing the truth of the heart.

The bow did not fail.
The archer did not fail.
Love only wanted the joy
of searching for itself.

The mind is a young colt:
it kicks up dust,
runs ahead of the caravan,
mistakes movement for direction.

And the body—
a clay lamp,
surprised by its own flame.

You say, I am this name, this story,
but the sea laughs gently.

In one drop,
the ocean appeared as a face.

You are not inside the world.
The world is folded inside you,
like a letter written in fire
and sealed with breath.

The Beloved did not become you
to disappear into everything,
but to sing as one note
never heard before.

A star leaned close to the earth
and called itself you.

Do not carry what is not yours.
Lay down borrowed masks,
old beliefs that learned your voice,
fears that outlived their season.

When those dissolve,
what remains
is not less.

It is the whole
arriving as one Life,
one moment—
Love
remembering Herself
as you.

Raudri (Maria Rippo)