There’s No Place Like Here

by Anna Ruiz

When you fall off the map of your
own predestination
and you fear you have no place
to go but that flat
line between life and death
remember who filled in the highways
and byways with all those alternate routes
along the one and only contiguous way, and who
called to whom from that ocean of despair,
when at last you folded in all the frayed and bloody
edges and now you know the celestial earth from your
spaceship of discovery, know there are no shortcuts
to being here.

the other side of the highest and most impenetrable wall
is the darkest mirror,
the other side of the darkest mirror is an iron gate,
rusting in the salty air,
the other side of the iron gate is an unfathomable ocean
calling to the other side,
the other side of the other side is a rainbow bridge,
evaporating in the Light.