crystal exploration - rhodochrosite

Back in 2020, before their passing, a friend and I exchanged writing prompts each month. In June, it was love is. When I started feeling into rhodochrosite, the poem floated into my awareness again.  

Love Is 

1.
I once tried to cup a wildfire in my hands
and nestle it into my heart like a hearth's comfort flame,
but it burned through the edges, dug into my whole body,
poured through my blood like a volcanic current, flowed
out from my eyes and mouth, leaving behind
only skeletal remains. 

2.
We sometimes pull off old country highways
because there is a building that is crumbling from age,
from the weight of its stories and the gravity of time.
Its windows are open mystery, shine scattered on the ground,
paint peeling, ivies and trees tangling with pillars and roof.
There is life there, and we lean in. 

3.
I have walked on tightropes of light, bright and giddy,
and, sometimes, I have curled into a ball, finding
tunnels that go so deep that it is easy to get lost, to think
the cave is safety. Then I brush a finger to my cheek,
shake my shoulder lightly, whisper in my ear, “Hey, hey.
Tasha? It's time to wake up. There's stuff to do.”

4.
My toes are brushing against the Milky Way, scattering
stars onto our skin, shimmer and sweat, then I burst
out laughing at the discomfort of the deck beneath our bodies,
no matter how we untangle and re. His eyes are sunshine
on water, here in the middle of the darkened prairie;
ocean waves embrace me.   

5.
I want to talk about the way he looks at me, with the purest
of acceptance, this person who has known me so long,
who lives with my quirks and shadows, my laughter
and dreams, how his gaze holds me so tenderly and entirely
without ever trying to spin a web around me, and how
that kind of love burns with glow and not scars. 

The thing about rhodochrosite is that it holds immense love. Pink crystals are known to do that, but this one really, really does, the kind of love that goes deeply, then even deeper, and then more. 

In The Encyclopedia of Crystals, Judy Hall states, "...it teaches your heart to assimilate painful feelings without shutting down." It's not a soft fluffy version of love.   

It's the kind that helps us face all that need facing while still feeling immense love for ourselves and others, helps us to be expressive in that love, to open to it in the fullest sort of way. It's real and rooted. It's real and sacred.   
 
As I've been writing this, I've had one spider land on me, then another float down right in front of me. The first seemed startled to find themselves on me. The other was just floating serenely in light. Spiders are storytellers, the weavers of life and creativity, nudging us in our own weaving. Seems fitting that love is such a critical part of life's web, of the stories that awaken again and again.