The Unwavering: How Do You Reconcile? Or... Do You?

By Lily H.D. Smith

The Unwavering is a collection of short fiction stories exploring reconciliation between humans and the multifaceted nature of relationships. The book centers upon how we reconcile in our relationships with others but, most importantly, how we can reconcile with

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Dec 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9798885040051

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The Unwavering

The Unwavering

How Do You Reconcile? Or... Do You?

Lily H.D. Smith

New Degree Press

Copyright © 2021 Lily H.D. Smith

All rights reserved.

The Unwavering

How Do You Reconcile? Or... Do You?

ISBN

978-1-63730-710-6 Paperback

978-1-63730-848-6 Kindle Ebook

979-8-88504-005-1 Ebook

For anyone who needs it

For the people in pain

For my mother and Source

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

—Serenity Prayer, Al-Anon Family Groups

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing

and rightdoing there is a field.

I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass

the world is too full to talk about."

—Rumi

I am sorry that the only way we have been taught to heal is to hurt.

—Alok Vaid-Menon, Femme in Public

The Body Is Not an Apology.

—Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

Introduction

Poetry. It was meant to be for you and, hence, for me,

One can see you and cannot see me,

For I am here, and you are there,

Yet I find you everywhere,

It has yet to be,

What we will see,

Or accomplish,

Or maybe, perhaps be,

But that’s just a choice,

A choice for me,

We choose to be together,

And we choose to be apart,

So where is the medium ground?

That can be found without a play,

A move, a measure,

Where does that leave us?

And how can we take the steps to the pleasure,

Of our freedom?

Don’t choose me,

Or listen to whom you’re supposed to be,

If not for them,

Then for you,

And just forget about me,

’Cause baby,

I’m right where you’re supposed to be,

And I can see you,

In a distant land,

Wondering where the sand beneath your feet went,

Or if you took a breath too deep,

Just forget the feat,

And feel the noise,

The poise of The Truth,

Because when it strikes,

You might try to fight,

Or hide and let go of the light,

But do neither, and wait,

Because reality won’t tear,

And The Truth will find you everywhere.

A Different Academy

Her lands were speckled with a sea of moving bodies, inhabitants by the thousands walked upon her with soft and timid steps. Their footsteps marked a slow, monotonous rhythm—the sound of company. The humans belonging were small, and their whispers drifted like silk upon the honeyed, sweet air.

Pavement cut into her a map where they would travel—how far and wide they could spread. The humans began to expand, covering her land with their small, delicate structures. Sometimes their structures would last, withstanding decades of wind and air, and other times their structures were finite, much like their presence upon her rocky skin.

They decorated her with lights, glowing in the shade of her shadow at dusk and the luminescence of their souls amidst the rolling days. Sometimes the minutes, the hours, and the days became one—an endless cycle of breath, of life. She was smoldered in the phosphorescence of their hearts.

Yet, her hills were tired and sore. The souls of the humans tapped their soft slippers on her hardened land, and it made her ache. She ached—longed for the freedom that her inhabitants felt.

In fact, they weren’t really her inhabitants. Her land of Larung Gar, Tibet, was small to her but large to the people. Over the course of five decades, people found her and greeted her with quiet whispers and hands which vowed to protect her. And protect her they did.

The homes and waystations and huts of red logs and the silver of corrugated metal roofs protected her. It kept her warm, knowing the humans were watching over her, keeping her warm from the elements, from the winding winters that made her constrict in the cold rigidity. They watched over her in the warming, brittle of sunlight in the summer. The people had become one with her—one with her rips and folds and her hills and tiny, gravelly rocks—and they lived like that for as long as the world continued.

Voices sang—dancing, twirling—against the power, the strength, and the guiding hand of the wind. Rainbows of red, yellow, white, gray, blended into an artist’s palate as her green vibrancy cut against the contrast.

But soon, she started to notice a shifting on her lands. The hills upon which the monastery was built began to shift. The monks and nuns and inhabitants of her land began to move in different patterns. Their patterns began to shift against the wind. The wind began to alter itself, swinging its paths elsewhere, away from the monastery. It wasn’t long before there was an emptiness to the academy. It wasn’t long before their footsteps softened even more.

People were leaving. The weight upon her skin slowly started to release. Homes remained empty with the whispers of those who had left—reminders of their momentary presence. Yet, the homes of others remained. Relief tried to slip through her rolls, her cragging rock formations, the villages of her inhabitants. Solace tried to reach its hands into the cracks of their relationship, but it failed. Instead, something else worked its way in.

A building of grief, a wave of loss.

She overheard the faint voices of the humans discussing evictions and government. She didn’t understand what they meant, but the inhabitants continued to speak of a forced removal—a narrowing of people. The humans talked in hushed whispers of fellow friends and nuns who were displaced, without a home, unsure where to practice their religion.

It wasn’t long after those conversations that the demolitions began. A murdering of homes, their metal and wooden bones removed by contraptions of machinery.

Things were shifting. People were leaving, the energy was crying, and homes were taken. Loss wound itself through the mouths of her inhabitants until, eventually, it wound itself into her.

It wasn’t long after the evictions and demolishings when death began to remake itself upon the monastery.

She could feel the sobs of the displaced humans, their loss of a place to practice. One day, the cold rigidity of both the weather and The Displacement swept through the hills, as did something else.

Death.

The hand of death grabbed the neck of a nun who had been evicted. The nun had been forced out of the village by the government.

While the nun called death to take her, it was a result of having no future of where she could practice, of where she could go, and of where she could be safe.

Death was safe, and it took the nun, grasping her fragile hand and carrying her sweet body out of the hills.

The nun was gone, but the land was omnipresent. She continued to feel the humans and death’s new presence in the academy. She was always around, she had seen everything and felt everything. She knew when death came, changes arrived at her doorstop. Death was back, remaking itself in the twilight of her hills. Remaking itself in the dawns and dusks of her people.

A series of other nuns asked death to take them after that, and she watched as they retreated out of the hills, away from the threat of government.

The energy of the hills continued to envelope the humans, death becoming a distant friend. The people’s words were a refusal to the government, a dedication to love and to religion.

She began to bask in the newfound strength of the human’s commitment—of their commitment to one another, to Buddhism, and in the end, to herself. The humans began to remember the pain of the force they were fighting, while holding on to the power of the hills upon which they sat. Her skin bristled with the sweet loves of word they showered upon her.

Their homes lined her like the busied musical signatures of old hymns. She held within her memories of the bullying from the government and its chaotic envelope of development. But the humans held steadfast, full of the grace of love.

Nature spoke, a reverberation throughout the plentiful basket of wonderings. The wonderings of humans poised themselves at the tips of their dark and brutal, burdened lips.

She realized it was no longer her and the inhabitants. They were one.

With a sigh, she allowed the humans to be released from their burdens. And she let it rest, like the departure of spirit.

Trains Come & Go; Goodbyes Stay & Never Leave

Her wispy hairy hair wound around her face in serpent strands. Juliana? She turned to face him, the lines of age outlining the melancholy that seemed to be in his eyes and perhaps the joy in his heart. She was trying to think about something; there was something she wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come.

Juliana, I’m going to miss you.

She nodded, still trying to recall the thought she had placed somewhere in her mind. She couldn’t understand why it wouldn’t come.

Elias, I … I was going to say something. But I can’t seem to remember it now. Her face squeezed as she looked in the distance trying in vain to recover something that was already lost.

He reached for her hand, It’s okay, Juliana. It’s okay, I’m understanding.

She nodded. She stood there in the center of it all, at the main station in the center of Berlin. The atrium of open glass overhead reverberated the presence of all the hundreds upon tens of thousands of souls that spent moments in the train station.

They spent their moments traveling—so many people coming in and out of the station looking for lost loves, finding love, traveling to family, traversing with friends, journeying alone. She thought about all the hopes and dreams and wants and desires of all of these people. So many people. But where did she fit? What would happen to her desire? Her desire for Elias.

The travelers reached for love and for lust, for pain and for joy. Everyone coming through the station had some desire. Whether their desires would be fulfilled depended on their journey. So, what was Juliana’s?

So she stood there, in a moment of pause, trying to recall one thought. She looked at Elias, centimeters away from her, and she knew the moments they had left were few. Her heart twinged—an anticipation of loss.

She remembered the first time he’d been drunk with her. They were young when this had happened; they had aged together.

They were sitting in a small hole-in-the-wall bar deep in the heart of West Berlin. So … where do you live?

I’m sorry. This is only our fourth date. You think I’ll tell you where I live? She said, a smile jumping into her voice. She wasn’t sober either.

Elias laughed a short burst. I’m sorry, I didn’t tell you why, His eyes rolled and tumbled involuntarily, his drunkenness starting to take effect as he stared at her. I have to walk you home, to make sure you get home safely. His eyes seemed innocent to Juliana, and she burst out laughing.

Soon Elias joined in, their laughter joining together, a cacophony of joy. Elias, you beautiful boy, you can’t take me home. You wouldn’t be able to take yourself home, Juliana smiled, gratitude piercing her heart.

Somehow, she and Elias had stumbled upon one another. She didn’t know why, but she knew they were connected. It didn’t matter that they both listened to The Smiths and Joy Division, or that they had traced every section of their city that David Bowie had been to. It didn’t matter that they both liked some of the same beers or had come to Berlin from somewhere else. What mattered is they lived in their home of Berlin together, and they found each other, separately.

Well, fuck. I’m supposed to take you home. It’s the gentlemanly thing to do, Juliana. His soft eyes seemed to play and plead with her at the same time. He puckered his lips.

Well, I guess I’ll just have to make sure you sleep safely. I guess you’ll just have to come home with me. She grinned, finishing her beer and wiping her chin.

Elias guffawed, a grin engulfing his face. Alright, then. I guess we’ll have to have a fifth date … wait, what date are we on?

Oh, come on, Elias. We’re this far, I don’t think we’re just going on dates anymore. Besides … They looked at one another in their eyes. Words weren’t necessary for them. Elias reached for Juliana’s hand, and they intertwined their fingers. Juliana didn’t realize they had entwined their lives then, but she knew it now.

She had taken Elias home that night, tucked him in on the couch, and snuggled up on the armchair next to him.

Now, here they were, years later, and the only tangible memory she could recall was Elias’s unsoberness.

I’m sorry, Elias. Memory fails me sometimes, there was something I wanted to say to you … She trailed off, age overcoming words. Sometimes it did that. That’s what happened when you aged, when your life had been lived in decades upon decades.

When she was younger, she had always wondered just what it would be like to get old. Her friends and she had gone through the motions of promising to stay as one, to stay together as age began to reach out its hand toward them. But alas, they hadn’t stayed together. And she knew those promises of youth. She knew how most of the time they would not keep.

She was older now. Experience had made her old, wisdom had made her age, and adventure had yet again made her young. And so it was, this was the passage of time, and the transitions of living and life.

Elias—her love, her friend, her companion—stood waiting: not waiting for her to say anything in particular but waiting until she had to step onto the train that was rolling in behind her.

She never did like trains. They had always seemed foreboding—either someone was leaving or someone was staying—but nevertheless, a choice was being made. A journey was not being adventured, and she felt as though her journey was coming to an end with this train for Bonn.

Elias, I … You know words fail me at times, and I’m just so—

He waved her words away. Juliana had a feeling he understood. His eyes always told her the entirety of the story that his words could not speak.

Her heart started to quicken, its pulsing marking itself momentously within her. She had to leave him now.

She had to leave him.

When she finally spoke again, she did so with a quiet reverence and strength. I have to leave you now.

I don’t want to leave you, he said. You don’t want to go.

Juliana didn’t want him to say those words. But she knew he wouldn’t be Elias without them.

I don’t want to leave you. But you need to go. And you also need to leave. Part of your leaving is leaving me, Elias whispered.

They nodded together, always in synchronicity. It’s time for us to go, but that doesn’t mean we’re done. We’ll always never be finished, Elias spoke again.

"I just want you to know I will never leave you and I am just so, so … And even though the words aren’t coming—"

It’s okay, Juliana. There’s no need. I know the words aren’t coming. They never do when they have to.

Thank you, Elias. I appreciate that; I appreciate you. It doesn’t matter anymore what I couldn’t remember. It can’t be important. I love you, but love isn’t enough. But we are each enough … Clarity was touching Juliana. I don’t think there’s anything else to be said.

He nodded slowly. His eyes dipped around his face and the face frowned itself