SILK JOURNEY

When you left, the sun did not shine for three days. On the radio they said there was an extraordinary solar eclipse. The reason surprised all the physicists and explorers of the cosmos. The moon stopped its lonely lap around the Earth and stayed like that for three days. This caused a number of cosmic cataclysms with unpredictable consequences.

The moon did not want the sun to over shine your departure. After three days of sadness and general confusion the sun rose above all the gardens, parks, forests, seas and oceans. It illuminated the whole Earth with its shine, it warmed all the cold hearts. But the sun did not rise above my house, and the trees in my garden sank into the dark.

When you left, my only company was the lonely moon, which rose every night just over my garden, stuck in one of the trees and stayed there until the morning as a true guard.

When you left, the clouds traveled around  the Earth and they absorbed the tears of all the lonely people. Then they poured tones of tears on the ground in the form of rain. The rain fell with the power of the Biblical flood, and left lasting traces in the form of crying eyes.

When you left, you told me to wait for you. You told me to wait for you in this life, and in every other. You told me that you are not ready now, and that you are suffering so much, looking how I am fluttering around free. You told me that this would not be an equal union - between a slave and a free bird. You told me that in the next life you would belong to me.

I told you I am no longer free. And that means we both are slaves, which makes us equal. I told you that our love equals us, but you told me it was not enough. And that you have to leave to come back one day because this is an unfinished story that does not know what end to develop.  I promised I would safe my body for that one day. And I've been waiting for you for countless days and even such long and lonely nights. I waited for you when all the other stories around quickly wrote their ends. I waited for you as a true widow of an unrealised love story that awaits the main character to come back and to declare the end. I waited for you when other main characters wanted me to be their main lady.

They even promised a rapid development of this love story and a quick happy end, in which they were sure they would make me happy forever.
Instead, I was still waiting for you, because I did not believe in quick and long-lasting happiness.

I was not sure how long to wait for you and whether I would live that day. I waited for a divine sign to tell me when to stop waiting. If I stop waiting for you today, will this be disrespectful to my love for you. Whether a few more days will matter. That is how a few days passed in waiting of the divine sign.

One day in the middle of nowhere and in the middle of the universal boredom in which all the living creatures had sunk, a thunder tore the sky. The thunder interrupted the boredom and the empty idleness of all. The thunder cut off the electricity. All the TVs exploded. People went out with large red eyes, watching but not seeing. People could not recognise each other. They were strangers to one another. Then the thunder struck a few more times, and people suddenly started seeing from the strong rumble. When they saw each other, they were frightened and started crying in despair that they were the only surviving units on this planet. In the eyes of the others they did not look like humans. Then the thunder hit for the last time and the people rushed to the pubs. The innkeepers could not manage to pour the wine so quickly. People rolled drunk on the pub floor crying. The love had left this planet.

When the thunder struck for the last time, the lightning tore apocalyptically the sky. But that did not bring back love. The rain made a flood. The flood hoped to gather all the hatred, evil and misery, and take them away from the world of people. And it succeeded in half. Then the rain stopped. But that did not make people automatically happy. They were still laying like drunken sailors on the floors of the pubs that the flood had turned into boats looking for a beach to moor.

When the rain washed your face from the ground, I was about to forget you. When the snow blocked the roads toward you, and there was no hope that looked like you, I thought it was the end. That was the sign I was waiting for. And you were forgotten.

As the sun rose again over my garden, I set off on my way to seek  new love. I left, thinking I could find you again. I walked long and hard. I fell, I got up. I got wounds on my body. The wounds were of different depth and history. Some said it was good that I had wounds. It seemed I was blessed that I suffered. Because that meant I was alive. That He still wants something from me and has something prepared for me. I just had to be determined to go long and to find it. Like that game for kids, hide-and-seek. On the way, the wounds hurt. Some even bled. Wounds from betrayals. Wounds from the evil. But it did not matter. I could ignore the pain of my body. Because I was looking for you. I was looking for someone to love me again. I knew He loved me. Everyone said that He loved his children equally. But I was not strong enough to live only with his invisible presence. And I kept searching.

So that is how I got to the farm. The farm that produces silk butterflies was at the end of the desert. At the end of the desert begins the paradise that some enterprising businessmen had built to take the money of naive tourists. The farm offered demonstrations of metamorphoses and transformations. How to turn for a month from a simple worm into a luxury butterfly.

The farm was full of eggs from which the great silkworms were to be born. The great silkworms had to die to make their divine transformation into butterflies. Because after the death a new life comes. And the life comes from the death of something. The great silkworms lived to eat, die and to be born again as something other than what they were. They were afraid of the light. The darkness was their shelter and preparation for the birth after death. The darkness was preparing them for the metamorphosis. There was something divine and full of mysterious meaning in the fact that the silk worms rushed so solemnly to knit their silk cocoon and disappear from the world in it. It looked like a sacrifice where they voluntarily offered their lives as a gift to their invisible god. They were themselves weaving their silk coffins, lying on their own, and then, when they woke up for a new life, they no longer had any memory of what they were before they became butterflies. Death does not like the light. Because the light is like a promise of life after death. The great silkworms did not know anything about it; they simply performed automatically their roles. People on the farm played gods, cruel gods. Because they did not allow butterflies to be born, they were interested in the silk the worm gave them. They did not care about the life after death, but only about the death that made a profit.

When they heard my story, the people on the farm declared me a saint. Because, according to them, no love story deserves a bad end. Because you do not deserve me to wait for you. The people on the farm said that it seems I am a wise woman who could be useful to  advise them, and they gave me a job. They gave me a small office, they put my portrait with a small aureole over it. Because, according to the people on the farm, my suffering for you has surpassed all human norms and expectations and should be rewarded. No, not someday, today and here, on the farm. On the farm, all of them declared me a chief priestess. I had to decide which cocoons to be born as butterflies and which to become silk.

And then you showed up. You just opened the door to my little office, greeted and said coldly that you were looking for a priestess for advice, and all the signs went to this office. Everybody said that here is the priestess who understands the human suffering. She can advise you how to survive a great deal of suffering.

You came from a world that had convicted you of twenty years of boredom and loneliness because you had not tried to change the system. You came from a world that condemned you to soulless loneliness and conscious suffering. You came from a world in which your heart had long stopped beating.

When you left me and the thunder ripped the heavens, and then there was a flood, you knew you had to come back to me. You felt that you are not free because you are dependent on our love. You understood this immediately, but there was no way back. The flood was Biblical, you were not a good sailor, and you neither had a ship.

When you left, the flood surrounded you everywhere and did not allow you to come back to me. Because you were not ready for me.

When you left, your body was as strong as the stone that carries the power of creation on the planet. Your body resembled those mythical primal elements that formed from the outburst of a star. When you left, your body had gathered starry dust in abundance with which it could make you spark from experiences and passion, but you were not ready for it. You were content only with a smoldering fire.
When you left, you started looking for a way to come back to me. But there was no way, only a huge flow of human tears and suffering.

When you left, you said you should find me at all costs. Because I kept your life in my heart and you did not have the key to it to get yourself free.

Then you decided that you needed a sign to find me. And you started looking for a sign of God in everything. You walked around several countries, and everywhere you asked if people had seen me. You were asking if they had seen the woman who stole your heart. But no one had seen this woman.

Then, after so much walking when you were at the end of your strength, and a beggar pitied you. He gave you from his water, he shared with you the little bread he had. And you felt he was as a brother by destiny. Then the beggar said that these are the rumors that there is a priestess who knows everything about the human suffering. People said the priestess lived at the end of the desert on the farm that gave birth to life after death. Something like a resurrection. And if you find the silk butterfly farm, maybe the priestess may advise you how to deal with your suffering and how to find peace. So you took the road again and after a while you were in the resurrection farm.

When our eyes met, the suffering came out of us and filled the room with meaning. Years of wandering around the world have changed us, but not so much that we do not recognise each other. We both loved the suffering more than ourselves. Because it was our connection with each other. And we had turned the suffering into a cult, making it the meaning of our lives.

At that moment, in a dark room on the farm, hundreds of cocoons had finished their dying process. And after the death was on the farm and celebrated another victory, it was the turn of the life to triumph. Hundreds of butterflies flew into the room where Me and You were staying overwhelmed.

That same day, many springs with water broke out in the desert, promising to quench the thirst of all the thirsty people.

And the process of resurrection began for all living creatures.

(Elena S. Lyubenova)

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