Epiphany as the storm thunders over the Mount; as I walk in lightning sky and chilling rain…
I have slept nervous, travelled book-coiled and silent, woken terrified of my own Ophelia mind.

I have steeled self for self-discipline’s sake and driven in the opposite direction to avoid the desire that works so powerfully in me – to speak, to influence, to stand on tables and preach; to control, to share, to EVE.

I have run from Woman in me and I have hid amongst supermarket shelves with children and even in the butcher shop I could feel my own pound of flesh beating wild.

It is not until now, after walking the dam wall like we have done time before, that I understand it.
It is the brevity of the out. It is the dam wall breached and then hurriedly patched before the cracking flood can overwhelm.

We sit around a conference table and are given opportunity share things hidden in the deep. The God lessons, the hearts-laid-bare.
And then just before I can’t breathe I have to inhale my own wasp nest again before any can fly beyond my reach and off to who knows where. I have rocked this pestilence to sleep with my tireless running and now they are awake and swarming & trapped angry inside. One escapes when I naively open my mouth to explain and I have to swallow it back whole and run again to make it settle down.

It is a dam wall breached and it’s a hornet’s nest and the stings in my stomach make tears come out my eyes and ruin my mascara right before dinner.

David’s psalms are wasp nests unlidded.

God save me from these paper wasps.
They are starting to lay eggs.

Ophelia
(Antoine Auguste Ernest Hébert 1817-1908)