Last year I am searching for him.
Where are you, where are you, where are you?

Over river beds, through a bamboo forest, across a muddy jungle of obstacle course thick trees; we boulder hop on up to the double water falls tucked deep in this valley. Sometimes you have to work a bit to go to magic spaces and find holiness in this place.

Broken up, broken in, broken down. My blisters bleed and peel out as my heart bleeds and peels in solidarity. He is gone; I am alone, and I’m seeking the divine resolution of his aftermath. But I cannot see, I cannot feel. I’m hung up on the fact he never made it to this place.

I have an expectation of how things will be.

I don’t know then what I know now- I don’t know that the stars are always with us and that the stones hold as many secrets as the skies. I don’t know that expectations are the bolted door that prevent us from seeing all that is unseen. I don’t know that holiness can be found in a breath or that this moment of abject grief is divine.

This year is different.

Over and up and across and around. Green to stream to mud to blue. I hop, I skip, I jump, I laugh. My blisters long healed, still healing, never healed- a callus is allowed to form and heal and crack and reform again. The falls are crystalline; sincere in intent; pure with power. They exhale grace.

The locals call it Makaleha: eyes glancing upwards in admiration and wonder.

I didn’t know then what I now know.
He is everywhere. He is everywhere. He is everywhere.