44 Stare into the Abyss & Watch It Stare Back
Stare into the Abyss we never will. But you don’t belong solely to us. You should not stay here. Your place is elsewhere.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t know who I am. The cloud of beings hesitates, a gesture so universal, I recognize it immediately. How ironic I can read these beings’ emotions when I’ve always struggled to read human faces.
I can’t help the tears, the self-pity that washes over me.
Where do I belong? This void with these beings, or back with my sisters, my daughter, my lovers, and friends?
Am I human? Am I an alien creature? Neither or both?
A fragment of soul in a stolen body. Reggie.
Me. Parent, mother, lover, friend, alone, human. I am alone.
Something soft strokes my face, wipes away my tears, tucks my dangling foot gently and securely into a foothold I’d overlooked.
They are leaving me behind. They do not want me.
I do not fit or belong here either. It’s as if the beings whose souls reside in that mist can read my mind as they speak again.
It isn’t meant as an insult that we will not keep you here now.
You would find belonging if you stayed, human-one-of-us.
We’ve always claimed you as ours, long before you knew of our existence.
And we would have continued to do so had you never found your way to us.
We will continue to do so. We are always with you.
You are loved, wanted, needed, here and there.
But other members of your family won’t let you go so easily from the place called Earth.
Look, even now they’re searching for you. You are not alone. Hold on a little longer.