Cast into the warm fires of southeast Asia, I find moments to press up and lean against the presence of myself. I feel the vessel of my own body, a form of elongated tendons and broad shoulders.
My soul, my being, who is this creature of muscle, of bones, of cryptic wet mass?
Who is she and what does she desire?
She yearns for it all.
She needs her palace to sink back into her lacquered wooden throne, where she orders her body be enveloped by royal gold. She requires a fine voice to stretch grand and reach outwards and calm lagoons to cool off and venture inwards. She needs rivers of silk to drag her into the monsoon swell, to soak into her being and quench her thirst. She demands glaciers of lychees and cherries carted to her each and every summer's night. She asks the moon to guide her, the sun to warm her. She may need the cosmos and all its grandeur but most of all she needs herself, for her own presence is her true currency.
In her abbeys of individualism, she finds something worth more than all her gold, more than all her jewels, she finds a true inward sense of confidence. A realised self that stretches from her belly into her glowing surroundings. She can cast shadows to the moon and eclipses towards the sun but it is her inner sanctum that she returns for sustenance. For in her world, in her mind, but most of all in her gut she knows what is righteous.
