Kaleidoscope

There is a way in which we encircle
one another,
melting our porosity,
moving through
the fluidity of
our reflections
until they cease as two.

The wind draws the branches away from the trees. Air echoes through the leaves above. Below, only stillness. The glass window between me and the towering pines feels thin, a permeable cell membrane designed for exchanging nutrients.

Time and the zones in which it is channeled have liquified. I am instantly translated, telegrammed, cabled, briefed, texted. Words spiral through the kaleidoscope of my perception, a mirror of presence. In the space between letters, kalos “beautiful, beauteous” takes eidos “shape.”

I form the pixels of my existence before your eyes.
We meet in the light of your awareness.

In the space of your reflection, an idea emerges, ascending as a wave. A carrier of nothing on its way to something. I bow to the paragraph. I pray to the title. We spiral in and out of the colors of our consciousness.

I ask: Let the words wake what is dormant inside me. Let that which speaks give voice to the silenced. Fragments join in collaboration, points on a map that intersect inside myself, abandoned locations pinned, longing to be seen.

I type as I gaze into the mirror. Who am I, reflected in the gaze you return?

I embrace solidity around me. I love the orange glow of the oak chair; I love the drafting table I use as my desk, its soft surface and rounded edges. I love the vastness of the space into which I type, the letters drawn and smoothed by the eros in my fingers. Lips closed between whispers.

Writing you from my center, where currents of electricity flow through molten lava, streaming thousands of miles from the core of my being, magnetic forces shaping fields around me. Drawing and the drawn merging into one.

You say, “It’s not the narrative, but the energy behind the words that matters.”

You speak in infrasonic waves;
I hear only that which I’m ready to receive.
I respond in the space between words.

We will each other into being.
Every breath, an invocation.

A calling to the other side,
these letters form the vocabulary
of the words that pulse through my veins.

You respond,
a new being emerging in this moment
slipping into that which forms your body.

I am pulled into
that which calls forth my becoming.

You reach the axis of my vulnerability,
shaping the beauty of this one form.

Lori Shridhare is a freelance writer and communications director at Harvard Catalyst, a clinical and translational science center based at Harvard Medical School, where she writes news articles about trauma, resilience, athlete health, public health, and bioethics. Her writing has appeared in Tricycle, Positive News UK, and The Seventh Wave. She received her master’s degree in science writing from Johns Hopkins University and lives in Arlington, Massachusetts. Twitter: @LoriShridhare Instagram: lorishridhare