Ribcage

I believe in fate, patterns, and coincidences. Regardless of which you pick, each one cannot exist without a sort of order. For demonstration, let me put our lives on a grid and populate it with dotted events. Coincidences would be like two lines going through the same dot. Like how two trains on different ends stop at the same station; you see the other passengers on a different ride, going someplace else to routes they won’t bother you with and homes they won’t share with you. But for a moment and a moment only, you become each other’s view, you share windows as each other’s exhibit. Then the lines suddenly diverge: the train heads for the next station and the dot is left behind.

I believe patterns are when lines repeat the same trends of travel, like a man struck by lightning 7 times. First in 1942 fleeing from a fire only to be pierced by the sky; second in 1969 while driving a truck; third at a garden in 1970; fourth in ‘72, what you would call the world’s most dangerous method for a haircut; fifth a year later, perhaps God is trying to be a hairstylist; sixth in ‘76 not knowing his lesson, at a nice stroll in the park; and lastly in ‘77 at a fishing trip, only for a different rod to catch its prized fish. I believe patterns are when you reach out your hand to me, I take your palm, and I brush my thumb across it. I move my finger through its criss-crossing lines, and for the initiated this would be when then tell you that you have a life line, love line, marriage line, and a fate line. But for now, I could only tell you that what swerving lines you have are a pattern. I bring up my palm and hold it up to you, so that I can tell you that despite the difference in size, our hands share the same lines. Move your finger through my swerving lines, and you will find that our patterns now share a coincidence.

I believe in the sun and the moon appearing to be the same size from our Earth, how they’re small enough to catch with our hands and large enough for one to eclipse over the other. I believe in a comic character come to life–John Constantine, detective, warlock, and sex machine–impression and trepidation upon the writers who meet him, flesh and all, not knowing whether to follow or to flee. I believe in a tale of creation: how we are made from the earth and come from dust, walking upon a soil composited from our fathers and mothers. We are our own soil. We will burn, we will reap; we will grow plants, we will spread seeds. Then the dead will rise–not with a hand bursting out of a tombstone, but as a fruit plucked by a child. In this way, even after death, we will never stop giving. This is our love, affixed as a pattern.

And this is fate: that lines, regardless of pattern or coincidence, are always meant to travel towards a certain dot. I believe in my mother, crashing through the pavement from a motorcycle, demolishing her left leg and surviving on prayer; one hospital transfer; and a successful bone-replacement operation. Her leg-rod became an antenna for heavy rain as well as a burden. She would tell us “I would still be dancing,” if not for the metal, and I could see her poise in the way her leg lands on the bed when it aches. Is fate a thing determined by God, or does its meaning belong to man? My mother decided it would be used as testimony–that she survived thanks to God, and that is simply enough. Years later, the doctor who operated on her would meet her again. He would tell her that he has remembered my mother all this time through her X-rays pinned on a wall, studied by his students. She would tell him that after her accident, she would give birth to a son at an age she did not expect to have, while teaching a dance class she did not expect she could still teach, and they both agreed that she did more than just survive, but live afterwards as a miracle.

I believe in the ether: worlds in our dreams, where we meet in red rooms and melt on each other. There is, perhaps somewhere, a life in those worlds living out our brain’s most terrible and pleasant urges. Enacting dreams of elevators, dreams of each other, dreams of murder, dreams of privilege, dreams of which no matter its severity or beauty, a version of me will always wait for you on the other side of it. They will smile at a version of you and say “Good morning dear”, “How was your sleep?”, and with a gentle tug on your arm. I believe that in each reality, I will always look for a version of you, and you with me, different scars and all. We could be friends, we could be enemies, we could be lovers, we could be killers. But in the lives in which we are together, we will find our own pieces of the sky to look upon, in different Aretes, in different fields. Perhaps fate is like so.

Our lines can merge or trend towards a climax, thinking it is the end. We arrive upon the great big dot with drama and fear for our lives–and for the better or worse, our lives change and displace us. But the dot remains simply a dot. Our lines will settle one day but that is through death: a fate, pattern, and coincidence. But today it continues. They will move forward and drift again through their course. I rest in the fact that my life continues with you–that whatever the patterns or coincidences, the fate that calls upon you will call upon me as well.

Do you know there are so many ways we’ve expressed the words, ‘I love you’? Pick and match:

Remember to always say it fully. Three thousand, six hundred and seventy-eight times so far and counting: I love you, always the three words, always its full length, never falling short. You can add very much, you can add so much, you can merge them both. You love her always–this is the truth. You love her when she feels cold and when she feels warm. You love her when she wakes up and when she sleeps. You love her, so congratulate her; you love her, so rejoice with her; you love her, so mourn with her; you love her, so rage with her. Hear this, and this is important: there will be moments in these waiting times that will be harsh and difficult, long and full of tribulation. In these moments, against time and distance, you cannot save her, but you will be there with her. You cannot whisk her away, but you will wait for her. You will never leave her, and you can always go to her. When she feels like disappearing, when she pushes herself into the river to be left alone, tell her you will wait at her house, with all the doors open. Because it is worth it. Because you are each other’s fate, patterns, and coincidences–all bundled together–whether through hardship, joy, or migration.

Now I understand, when YHWH God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make an ezer (Hebrew, rescuer, delivering ally) suitable for him.” For in the Creation story, there is none to til the adamah (Hebrew, ground), so God creates ha-adam (Hebrew, collective, male-by-default noun: human) in His image. And there in the Garden of Eden, in a place of vulnerability where the ha-adam realizes it cannot do his God-ordained objective completely, God builds his ezer, his delivering ally. He puts ha-adam to rest, takes his side, and splits the collective human. For there was one, then was split into two. There was male, and then there was female: both split, both still images of God. We were not ever meant to find just a helper or an assistant. We were meant, as images of God, to deliver each other.

So reach out for my hand. Touch my fingers. Imagine our lines coming together. As a coincidence, we met by email. Like a pattern, our hands curl together whenever we meet. And now this is our fate, to be each other’s ribcage: to hold each other’s heart.

Remember to always say it fully. I love you, dear. I love you fully. You hold my heart.