Saṃsāra

A life unclear—
a boy in an Amish field,
his mother praying fervently,
a church leader watching
with that cold, unreadable certainty
men have when they believe
God agrees with them.

When I approach,
a burlap sack
slips over my head—
rough fibers scraping my face,
the knot yanked hard
against my throat.
Hands bound,
wrists burning under rope.

I do not fear.
My body remembers this.
I know the sequence.
I’m only here to witness—
the carriage rattling like bones,
the horses snorting steam,
the river breathing cold
before it devours me.

The plunge is brutal—
a fist of cold
closing around my lungs.
The burlap becomes stone,
pulling at my skull,
dragging me down
through the dark churn.
The weight feels ancient—
like something that has drowned me
before.

Water forces its way
into every opening,
every soft place,
turning my body
into something helpless.
Breathless.
Paralyzed.
Erased.

Then—
I rise above it,
watching my body
sink into the roaring water
as if I’ve watched this scene
a hundred times
in a hundred lives.

Why am I always killed?
Why have I carried death
like a birthmark
through every incarnation?

In this life I learned:
fear is a jealous god—
it ruins intimacy,
it poisons trust.

Even now,
I flinch at your touch,
haunted by echoes
of my own murders:
strangulation,
drowning,
and that life in the woods
where abandonment
left me torn apart by wolves—
my death just an aftershock
of being left behind.

And still—
I have lived longer here
than in any other life,
despite nearly being killed
several times,
my essence trying to carry out
whatever curse
follows me through time.

So why is this one different?
Why is it everyone else who dies—
Mother.
Father.
Sister.
Husband.
Friends.
Lovers.
Animals.

Everything I love
taken from me.
Everything.
Every time.

And that’s when I began to wonder
if this wasn’t punishment,
but endurance—
the last long stretch
of something ancient.
This life is the final showdown.
The hardest one.
The one where I chose
to pack every remaining lesson
into a single lifetime—
grief, abandonment, betrayal, love,
death after death after death—
because I am a very,
very
old soul.

And I am tired.

Once, on magic mushrooms,
I spoke to my higher self.
Not a dream,
not a metaphor—
a presence.
She told me
I was almost finished,
that this was my last incarnation,
that the losses were not curses
but closures,
and that when it ends,
I get to go home—
back to the family waiting
just past the veil,
patient and ancient
as I am.

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