She Will Endure

Notes from the Hollow Bone, entry fourteen

-for the nights when even the earth must listen.

There is a cry
that begins not in the throat,
but in the marrow.

The kind that buckles knees
in the middle of a forest—
where no one is watching
but every god is listening.

She howls—

not for rescue,

but for release.

For the ache that speaks not of weakness,

but of awareness—

that sorrow, rage, longing—

all of it is part of the condition of being human.

She does not deny the feeling.

She names it.

She honors it.

Then, like breath…

she lets it go.

Around her: ancestors stir,
guardian spirits rise,
the wind pauses.

But none of them move to stop it.
They whisper among themselves,
as if bound by a law older than mercy:

“She will endure.”

And in one flicker of awareness,
in a far-off corner of her spinning mind,
she understands:

This path was chosen.
Before time. Before flesh.

Chosen not for pain—
but for cleansing.

She is walking through fire,
not toward it.

This ache is what you find
after the anger shatters,
after the rage cuts through rock,
after the last glass of numbness
no longer numbs.

It is what’s left
when the smokescreen lifts,
when the music stops spinning,
when you are no longer hiding.

It is the ache
that cannot be dodged,
only carried.

She sheds what no longer belongs—

vices, memories, names.

Not all at once.

One by one.

Each fall is a letting go.
Each mile a remembering.

She walks a path
she cannot name
but has always known.

Spirit surrounds her.
Ancestors flank her.

She is not alone.
But she walks alone.
For now.

What lies ahead is not clear—
only this truth remains:

She is not done.

She will endure.

And somewhere beyond the fire,

a village waits—

already whispering her name.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai