tapestry of love

Dec 4

woven from wisps and fragments of 2025

In the smallness of any opening, nothing is more or less ordinary than anything else. Nothing is more or less simple, more or less grand.

I am telling you a story of what is real and true and tangible.

I met Turtle early in my journey. She called to me before I saw her. I sat upon her moss before she told me her name. She held me in an embrace of silence. I gave her a citrine stone. I could feel its tickle. I saw lifetimes of water, wind, ants, leaves, and squirrels upon her back. She and her moss nudged me to turn a different direction, walk to the other side of the stream. “There you will find them.”

Sometimes the only thing to do is sit on a stone and watch the ants next to your toes. Listen beyond ears and see beyond eyes. Let yourself be held by the sky in your skin.

As the world is breaking, we are dissolving and emerging.

What we know is growing vivid—each of us, a crystalline song rooted with wings.

Everything is spell. Everything is glimpses.

I was nudged to gather seven buttons from my button box and put them in my pocket. Later, as I walked toward the forest, there was a line of trees welcoming me. I said “hello” and knew the buttons were my offering. Upon bowing to the last tree, I smiled, realizing there were exactly seven.

The scale of a forest is hard to see when you’re inside it. What’s an acre to a tree? What’s a minute to the moss?

Everything is alive. Every wrinkle, wisp, and fragment, every sound, nudge, and feeling, every wish and offering, every nibble, every question, every thank you, every hum.

What is a prayer but to witness this smallest truth?

I heard the tree call to me. I walked up and kissed her feathered eye. She told me it was a tear. A feathered one for flying. I kissed her feathered tear again and sang her a song. I don’t remember the song. It was only for her. It came through me like a feather falling. And I fell, too, like water, like blood, like roots dripping stars. I stayed with her for a while. I don’t know how long. She had a short branch, like an ear or a horn. I whispered into it and told her secrets. She seemed to like it, so I continued to pour myself into her… songs and wishes and gifts. I stroked her bark like it was hair. She hummed. A small spider danced. The moss watched. Someone giggled. I don’t know who. When I said goodbye and stepped away from her, she called to me… “My name is Triumph,” she said. I smiled and bowed to her. “Pleasure to meet you, Triumph. I trust we’ll see each other again.”

Our curriculum lives inside us. Its currents flow through what we pay attention to, how curious we have the courage to be, and how deeply we let ourselves listen.

We all need space to listen.

We are imaginal waters, connected as breath and bumblebee.

Fall to the ground and bow. A spider will find you and show you the way home.

I thought it was a bridge. “An elf bridge,” I said aloud, but was quickly told not to call it that. “Okay,” I said, and I twirled. I twirled and giggled with the presence welcoming me.

Humans often talk about play as if it’s missing. They want it, but can’t find it, so they look outward to search for it, buy a package or program, schedule it into their busy lives.

But play isn’t out there. Play lives inside us.

The things that seem farthest away are always found within.

Our rumbling desire for play is primordial roar.

Do you hear the galloping in the pulse of your waters?

There is magic here.

She is at her desk. She is also lying on a bed surrounded by books. And, too, she is upon a pile of leaves with arms and legs stretched wide. She is dissolving. I am dissolving. Physically seeping out of this skin, dripping into leaves and grasses, disintegrating cell by cell as the worms and beetles unravel this bodied vessel. But it’s not the body letting go. The body is here. It is me who hovers. Who sees that this is travel. That every moment is travel.

We are creating new patterns, pathways, paradigms, and ways of being.

What’s essential is the RE-. Look back. Look deep. Look again. Trace the tissues back to the seeds that invited the roots. Be with the tangles—see their edges and overlaps, feel their tugs, listen to what they know of anchor and holding.

What else are you willing to turn over to the soils?

It comes as a whisper: The ache is the heart of it. The ache is the witness of the simplicity of the beauty.

We don’t live in an either-or story.

Always there is flow between separation and return, dismembering and remembering. Ancient and always—as long as there is Moon.

From her place at her desk, she looks up and out, remembering. I see her. I see this body held in this time. The angels cloak her, weighting her shoulders with softness and knowing.

Sometimes what’s needed is to hold something small in the palm of your hand, feel its edges and weight, and listen.

It’s at our fingertips—drips of potential humming within each moment of our days. It’s not ridiculous to talk with squirrels. It’s dismissive to walk by without saying hello. It’s not fanciful to ask angels, fairies, and stars to share their stories. It’s arrogant to think they have nothing to tell. It’s not impractical to slow down, sit with a tree, and feel the immensity of love in a moment. It’s short-sighted to think we can create a more loving world without attuning to our hearts.

Why are we here if not to bow in praise to the moon and the beetles, to the waters and the wind?

I stood for a long time with Mother Water to hear and feel and listen to the endlessness of her falling… falling over and over and over upon herself. The roar of it. The pulsing. The letting go.

Together, we sink into the leaves and witness the letting go. We become vibration. The leaves open worlds. The soil is the sky. The sky is the water. The water is the light.

Not-knowing is the deepest kind of knowing.

Take a walk. Maybe you will find a word or bird or rock to be your friend. Maybe you will lay your body upon the ground and rest. Maybe you will dream or weep or remember something you forgot you knew. Maybe you will hear the pulse in your fingertips as you stretch your arms wide to welcome yourself home.

We are more than moths emerging from imaginal goo.

I see gardens of herbs, vegetables, and flowers, children and grandparents together, animals and spirits and ancestors, old trees and new buds, layers of ferns and moss, circles of stories and songs, labyrinths, paths for wandering, and gatherings around the fire—together—weaving, building, cultivating, creating as devotion, as listening, as learning, as love.

We are vessels of imaginal love.

blessings, Melissa

I am a deeply analog creator. I write with pencil on paper. I print out my writing to make edits with a pencil on the page. For this essay, I cut out each fragment to move around a wooden table with my hands.