...The Birth of the Queen...

 ...The Red Queen is the Muse that has been watching me since the day a cell with my name on it appeared in the Great Abyss...She touched it with the tip of Her enigmatic finger and tiny shoots of light and energy spanned out into the Universe, touching everyone I would ever touch.  I began to feel Her the day I died.  Or, I should say, I began to Remember Her then.

...When I was two (the age of my youngest son now) I had a tracheotomy.  The throat portal had to be surgically opened, and as I turned blue with death, She stood there waiting for the precious instant to once again touch Her finger to my essence.  She waited until the room was cold and the steel table shivered under the pressure of trepidation.  She covered the room in a sheath of Red, blood lining tools of the doctors who would save me, physically, and the Tools She had at Her disposal.

...Light filtered in through the Red and Flesh.  The heart skipped three minutes of its life and then the miraculous Touch of the Lady electrified it back into Life.  She installed the work that I was to do, now that it was Time.  It took that three moments to be sure that I was the One She was entrusting to Her story. 

 ...For ten years She watched as I wandered through a quiet and secure life.  I went through the trials and tribulations of childhood and acquired the thorns of disappointment and betrayal.  Things that stay with you forever, things that you question now as an adult..."How could these things have been happening?  Was I really that alone in this world?" I look over them now, from the Tower I have currently built, and I stand beside Her as She shows me the red balloon that I accidently let go of when I was about 8.  She has it there, on that Tower of my youth.

...She shows me where the first line was crossed.  Then the next and the ones after that.  She slows down Time to show me how certain beliefs and attitudes came to be part of who I still am today.  She asks me to let the anger and disgust travel back to these things, and stay there with them.  They have nothing to do with today.  They have everything to do with learning about the way that mortals operate, and how some at an incredibly low and undeveloped rate can destroy a perfectly good soul at an early stage.

...She pulls these things out of me, like thorns from an enormous rose, and they bleed out into the stone beneath us.  It takes a little while before they stop, the memories flooding out onto the granite.  She holds them up in the extra Light of Today - this being Daylight Savings Time - an added Twilight kind of hour that She has reserved for just this kind of review.  The ugly truth is held out into the Light for me to look at once again, in a different way. 

 ...Suddenly I stood there dripping, bleeding, stinging all at once.  She put down the bucket, filled with an opalescent liquid shimmering with its menthol vapors.  I was colourless, void of vibrancy and texture.  Translucent and barely breathing, I became angered and the fire reignited my soul.  Slowly the tiny lights began to glow from below.  Red, orange, yellow...energy centers burst into flames. 

...Green, blue, violet...My heart beat without skipping and burning.  My throat opened for unspoken words.  My forehead pulsed as a portal of white yielded to its indigo gateway.  She had the bucket again.  It was filled with golden white Light that She poured onto the top of my head.  It trickled down into my brow, and covered my eyes, blinding me momentarily.  It paused at my throat and tentacles of energy swirled and stitched together the old wounds that originated there.  It traveled on then, down through the chambers of my heart - pink, green, blue...all twisted together...

...Shooting down straight into the final channel, yellow solidified energy churned above the primal fires burning below it...dropping into a self imposed inferno, the Light burned away the top layer of detrimental residue...the smell of burnt marshmallows and fuel filled the Tower...I was sitting in a pool of Everything.  She motioned for me to stand.  I could not.  She held out Her hand.  Again, we were side by side.  A cool wind floated over the tops of the trees and I was no longer in pain, no longer drenched in sweat, blood...tears...I watched the scenes pass though the neck of a huge hourglass. 

...A piece of beautiful prose by the medieval mystic on "Spiritual Friendship"...

"Your friendship is my glory.

When I began to love you,

your hand held up my whole heart,

And I found myself wanting nothing and no one

more than you.

In you and through you I felt I could suffer

any pain, any indignity, without anguish.

Your warmth melted my stubborn pride,

and your sweetness carried away my sadness.

I put my trust in you,

knowing that I could be happy with you forever."