The Border Woman

The old woman sat, eyes like pools of dreams, and imagined. If generations of pain can be passed down through bone and blood, why can’t love live there as well? She touches her face tentatively, tracing the line of her jaw—strong, etched with the strength of those who came before. Her teeth bite into questions, the kind no one wants to ask. But she does. She always was a bit too much, too wild, too free— when she was new, when she was open to life. She carries constellations of freckles, cascading and mirroring her inner universes— of which she has many, and somehow, not enough. She sees beyond time and space, as if the world were just a nestled egg. She is the Mother Bird, wrapping seraphic feathers—unfolded wings— around legacies of love and light. And tonight, she performs the ritual passed down in whispers. She places a bowl of salt and rosemary at her feet, draws a circle of ash around her chair. Lights three candles: one for the wound, one for the wisdom, one for the ones not yet born. She hums the note her mother taught her, the one that vibrates in the spine before it is ever heard. She slips a smooth stone into her mouth, cool and ancient, then spits it into the flame and watches the smoke form shapes only she can read. She stirs her tea slowly—not to drink, but to summon. Old names rise in steam, and memory drips down the rim. She thinks: What if dying is a door? One way only. No exit. Passive. But if we dare to enter, perhaps we pass through sacred realms. Purgatory is here— on this plane, Earth— when we mourn and are forgotten, when we remember and return through the doorway into ancestral truth. We arrive in gentle knowing, like hands capturing snow it settles for a breath, then dissolves. What if our ancestors and descendants live there, in the borders? What if— she wonders, her finger tracing the rim of the cup like drawing down the moon— what if?