Cocoon

Summer was a busy time, we bought a house, moved, started settling in. Fall came, and we burrowed in, filling cracks, cutting back the overgrowth, painting. 

Winter came and we cozied up inside. We installed overhead lights, made decadent food, celebrated. I traveled and traveled and came home and nested. 

I started noticing a flame flickering deep within my soul. It was way in there, under the brambles and sticks from last summer that had died over winter. The snow and ice fell on them, but they shielded the little spark, became a cocoon for it. I don't really know where this little flame might lead, what it's trying to burn away, what it's trying to cook, what it's trying to thaw out inside my heart. 

But these are the kinds of things you have to follow. You have to listen because you know there are bits and pieces of yourself that lie forgotten in the frosty forest of your soul, and they need to be warmed up. 

We can't be on fire all the time. This winter, I learned how to build a fire in our fireplace, and I am amazed at how much wood a small fireplace can burn when the fire is blazing. Once I even cried out, "This fire's on fire!" But we don't have unlimited wood in the world or unlimited wood in general. For a fire to last all day, sometimes you have to let it die down a bit so that it burns slower. 

And this is adulthood, right? Or maybe I should speak for the only decade of adulthood that I've experienced: my twenties. There's a lot of ways I could view my twenties, but when I think about that internal spark, it seems that it was fanned into a flame really quickly, consuming new ideas, new experiences. Then it had to die down for a bit, re-find itself in the steady embers. 

Me jumping over a bonfire once in during college. I cannot believe I did this.

If you'll allow me to mix my metaphors, the foliage of life cocooned around those embers. I always knew they were there, but I wondered if they might burn again the way they burned before. 

I believe they will. But I have to keep trying new things, because fires need fresh air. So little by little, I'm fanning the flames. The spark cocooned inside me is not dramatically unfolding yet, but it's kicking and wriggling and moving. 

Wriggle on my friends. Fan your flames. Spring is coming.