Coming And Going

More about Coming And Going

The cave was not really a cave. It was more like a mouth that finally remembered what it wanted to say after a few thousand years of hesitation. It opened in the side of the world, dripping stalactite teeth, glowing with that impossible furnace-red at the bottom where every confession sinks and smokes. Someone once said this place led either to heaven or to a neglected laundromat in Montana, but nobody remembers who said it, and nobody remembers Montana. The cave remembered though. The cave remembers everything people misplace, including people.

I went in the way someone falls asleep in church—without meaning to, but relieved once it’s happening. Outside, a tree stood pretending not to stare. Trees are too polite to interfere with human mistakes. Inside, the walls looked undecided: half stone, half dream, half animal belly. They pulsed like thoughts forming, unforming, apologizing.

Ahead of me stood a figure that wasn’t sure whether it was a person or a geological event. Its face was lace and ruin, like someone had tried to embroider grief and hung it wrong. It waited with patience that felt like weather. Nobody waits that way unless time has already eaten them and asked for seconds.

There was no wind. Just the sound of time clearing its throat. A secret stream slipped past, embarrassed to be noticed. The cave breathed in slow, thoughtful gulps, and I wondered if I was breathing or if it was simply borrowing my lungs because they were handy.

The strangest part was how polite everything felt. Even the darkness stayed where it belonged. Even fear took off its shoes at the doorway. Nobody says despair can behave itself. Nobody warns you that wonder can sit quietly with folded hands.

Above, the ceiling opened into purple distance and hesitant sky, like the world blurting something intimate and then pretending it didn’t. I almost waved. I didn’t.

I thought about turning back to the orderly world, where clocks pretend competence and doors don’t philosophize. But the red glow whispered coming and going, coming and going, like a tide practicing handwriting. And I understood: everything does this. Rivers do it. Rocks do it slowly. Hearts do it badly. Lives do it without asking.

So I stood there, between daylight and underworld, between what I was told and what existed anyway. The figure bowed, or I bowed, or bowing passed through us like shared weather. The cave breathed. I breathed. The world continued its strange job of being beautiful in inconvenient ways.

Coming and going. Leaving and arriving. Standing still while everything moves, and discovering that stillness is just motion with patience.