Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. - Rumi
In Crown of Thorns: Desert Rose, Chapter 1 begins with Waris standing at the threshold of two worlds—one known, the other pulling her into something terrifying and familiar. Is it prophecy? Memory? Madness?
Does it matter?
As I observe her dreams begin to rupture the already precarious safety of her waking life, I find myself returning to a familiar ache. Waris’ fracturing reality mirrors a rupture I know intimately.
Read Chaptxr 1
There’s a moment in the chapter where Waris clings to a dream, only to wake with the taste of loss heavy in her chest. I’ve woken like that, too. I know what it is to fall into a world that feels more real than the one I must survive in—to grieve something I never truly had. Like Waris, I constantly feel foreign everywhere except within my own mind. But I no longer see those breaches in my reality as interruptions.
They are portals. They are invitations. They are a sacred remembering.
I’m curious, my doves.
Where did you first feel fracture?
Did you trust it—or fear what came next?
xoxo
Until your shadow meets mine again—
Simxn
Author, Crown of Thorns: Desert Rose • Editor, The Alchemxst
the fear came first, as it always does. but i’ve learned to recognize it and consciously choose to trust and surrender 💚💫