Haoma
Reborn in the morning,
Haoma pieced together the threads of her past
and how on her 30th year, came to be alive with a new spirit.
The spirit climbed into her skin overnight,
guided by the new moon’s intentions and the smoke of palo santo.
The spirit enjoyed the new body, tan skin with soft hands, strong fingernails, dainty wrists, a slender body with muscles drawing curves and hugging the spaces it occupied.
Haoma stretched in the bathroom, contorting herself in a bow, pushing off the walls as she stretched her spine. She felt taller. She felt as if the memories of an ancient world descended into her head and found a place to call home. And when she looked in the mirror in the morning, she saw on her face lines in unfamiliar places.
The spirit laughed at the marks of a furrowed brow between her eyes,
“darling, your anger is getting the best of you-
the spirit envious of Hoama’s form in the physical realm
”let’s iron out that wrinkle before it becomes
a crater between your eyes.”
Haoma had always loved her scar of cynicism that pierced into the center of her brow, but she welcomed the unfamiliar thought
and the spirit narrating the new day.
It is up to us to work with what we have inherited.
As Haoma passed each day, her practice grew, starting her routine with a greeting to the new soul, sitting in silence under the dawn light asking questions, and learning of past successes in the ancient marketplace.
Haoma filled notebooks, and soon shelves, with the lessons, passed onto her by the wise spirit- whose conversations were humorous, productive
and utterly strange.
Haoma did not share the secret that she was inhabited by a soul.
However, occasionally people familiar with Haoma questioned her new commitment to justice, politics, and ideals.
Hoama brushed it off as a new joy in reading the news, not the terrible news in the headlines, but the news tucked away, of hard-working citizens forming coalitions to fight and win against oppressive policy. In reading success she felt courageous with her fellow people.
She prepared her morning ritual, delicately placing cups, saucers and spoons on the kitchen counter. Haoma’s thoughts were swept away with the spirit of an old merchant world, where agrarians saw wealth, craftsmen experienced their art as lucrative, and farmers sat with magi in the highest courts. This world made all the sense today, in the new year, on the first day of spring, with the sun at zero degrees in aries and the moon full in libra...
where the spirit climbed out of the water and took its first breath in Haoma’s space.
How did this intoxicating dream fair with Haoma’s reality, sipping morning coffee while resisting the urge to scroll nonsense on her iphone. As the water boiled she rummaged through the drawers to find a measuring cup, dosing her coffee with a scoop of fat and drops from a tincture.
This morning she sipped her concoction and contemplated the day ahead-
she opened the cold drawer to find two lemons and a clove of garlic.
“I must visit the market, and I’ll need the technician to repair the quartz in my haptech device”
She said to no one.
The next morning Haoma climbs back into the sun soaked bed
with her coffee.
A man opens the bathroom door. Steam dances through the sun rays.
He sits on the bed and says,
Goodmorning.
Haoma hands him her cup of coffee, he takes a sip and returns the mug.
Haoma notes out loud,
You know, we’ve done this before.
In the past, we’ve already lived lived and died.
You were a tormented ruler, decisions weighed on you.
I was decisive, and my certainty made me cruel.
Your reign ended too quickly,
I may have had you murdered.
the man lay on the bed and kissed her legs, stretch out.
and he said,
yet here we are.