Dear Spirit Guide,

I am

Skin, flesh, fat, bones, filth

Fragments of body, reduced to simmer

Took stock of my soul but the shelves were bare.

Meanwhile, the credit card is bloated

stuffed with the weight of new clothes

New shoes

New booze

New ways to pinch money and watch it bruise

My feet are calloused

From carrying all of the possessions

my body uses to protect herself with.

Annamaya Kosha

A shell constructed of protein, carbs, and fat 

To weight down the balloon spirit.

The humble solar soul-

Keeps a tidy home within the deteriorating body

Sweeps the floor while she waits for her call

And rises up when our flesh finally falls

You tell yourself it’s just a body

That wrinkles, giggles, and mingles.

And it’s just a body

To laugh at and adore

That it’s just a body

to tuck under dirt-

Lay your head down

and hide under mother’s skirt.

The soil will pack over

and the trees grow stronger.

Spoiled Annamaya Koshas pout-

Erupt in tantrums fueled by doubt

“I don’t wanna die!”

She holds on to her favorite bodies

And screams that they will live forever too.

Without a spirit to guide her home

The body is lost to the world.

Why is it easier to stake claim in this predictable darkness?

To buy swells of worldly comforts 

Drown in empty possession

And say I am happy now-

Than find peace in the promise of enlightenment

The great circadian rhythm of life and death

Dear Lady Spirit,

I met you for the first time today.

Thirty years- and you never introduced yourself?

To be fair, I haven’t looked Up lately

I wrapped my body in an iceberg stare-

Titanic sunk under thick anxious layers

You plunged in to save me, 

drenching your midnight locks with icy splashes of my fear

Thrust out your hands and broke through to the clear

Clung to my foot and gripped my left hand

Declared victory and wrangled my lost soul back onto her land

The great mother

Herds her children back home.