Camino de Santiago

I tore the covers off this journal.

I was desperate. Every cubic centimeter of me ached; I felt

my arches would evert from all the miles of ground I covered with

my overfilled, precaution-stuffed, tight-zipped backpack. The growing welts

along my shoulders said these things I’d thought I’d need to finish my

Camino were the reason that I possibly would not. But – how

could I go on without the extra soap, makeup, and underwear,

without the boost in self-esteem that is at least half our success, without

two water bottles, oil, salt, extra socks? The older pilgrims said

that being unprepared is danger – water loss and blisters are the worst part

of the journey. They were not. The worst was when I had to leave behind

my favorite pj pants, or lost my appetite inside the hunger in my heart,

or couldn’t stand the silence with his voice and touch inside my mind, their call

made stronger by fatigue and solitude. Oh, everything is heavier when

you’re tired and lonely, truer when you can’t divert your eyes from all

the things you hide behind the reasons you refuse to let them go – old wine

gone foul in older wineskins, poison saved in case you need it to survive.

These things will crush you or destroy you, pulverizers and landmines.

One day when arches swell to meet the soles of cracking shoes – one day

when lactic acid makes your muscles more acidic than fermenting

grief inside your heart – one day when tears of sun-parched desperation

are too much to hold inside – you’ll face your backpack and decide

what you will love and what you’ll leave and then you’ll leave the thongs

stuffed in the garbage, Bandaids on a rock, hair-ties and bobby pins on

empty tables by the trashcans where you shred the notes of love-songs

now irrelevant as him. I tore the covers off my journal. Yes, I was desperate. Every

cubic centimeter of me took the things I missed – my past – my homes – my dreams –

the god I used to think I knew – and left them scattered on the mesa, severing

pieces of my history and jettisoning them along the ancient trail that tangles

hills and mountains, vineyards, streams, tall stacks of rocks that other pilgrims

bore and left behind; memories that soothe like absinthe, memories that mangle

like an accident. I flung my grief across Galacia (though it took hope with it too),

tore veneers off deep anger, pulled out pieces Jenga-like from my internal

monuments and dams and walls. At last a solemn pilgrim office clerk 

gave me my Compostela. "Completed," it read. I almost smiled. I had

my proof already – in my blistered feet, light backpack, carved-out heart –

the empty spaces in my life making more room for me to breathe;

holes in shoes, frayed by endurance; new hopes in fields of controlled burn; 

a journal missing its torn-off covers.