What do you expect of me, truly,
that has not already been spoken
by mouths steadier than mine,
by elders of quiet thunder,
by strangers whose wisdom arrived
like rain on a roof you did not build?
What do you wish to receive from me
that has not been said, uttered, disseminated,
and spiritually navigated
through the long corridors of human wanting?
Tell me, then, without turning me into a mirror
you strike for answers:
what is it you are trying to liberate in yourself
by placing my voice in your hands
as if my throat could be the key,
as if my breath could be the bridge,
as if I could carry you across
what you have not yet dared to cross alone?
What do you seek from me, water carrier,
and what are you avoiding in your seeking?
Do not interrogate my every word
as though meaning were a courtroom
and I were on trial for your relief.
Sit yourself down.
Not as surrender, but as ceremony.
Reflect, diligently and lovingly,
until you can hear your own desire
beneath the noise of your questions.
Understand this: transforming pathways
does not only arrive in revelations.
It arrives in the mundane,
in the repeated lift of the vessel,
in the ordinary weight of water
that becomes holy because you chose to carry it.
To carry water brings the risk of no return.
Not because the road is cruel,
but because the self that begins the journey
cannot remain the self that ends it.
To be the first on any pathway
is to be willing to give
without needing applause to name it.
It is the risk of sacrifice,
the quiet agreement you make with the unknown
when you step forward
and no one is there to call you brave.
Still, you walk.
You walk and the earth keeps record.
Your footsteps press their small prophecies
into the ground.
And later, others will see the prints,
and their fear will soften into direction,
and their longing will find a map
where you once found only wilderness.
So carry your water.
Carry it through the days that do not glitter.
Carry it when the sky is indifferent.
Carry it when your hands ache
and your faith feels like a cracked cup.
Carry it with tenderness for your own limits,
and with fierceness for what refuses to die in you.
Seek within yourself
what it is that you desire.
Do not permit "look within"
to become a phrase you recite
while your life stays unchanged.
Do not turn insight into ornament.
Do not worship vocabulary.
Make worlds of it.
Build with it.
Labour with it.
Pour it into the roots of your living.
Let your questions become practice.
Let your practice become passage.
Let your passage become a road
wide enough for others
without becoming a cage for you.
And if you must take anything from my voice,
take this, simple and unescaped:
I am not your destination.
I am not the proof.
I am not the permission.
I am a cup you may drink from,
but you are the river.
You are the hands.
You are the one appointed
in each breath you have been given.
Stand, water carrier,
and walk.
Carry your water
until even the mundanity sings,
until the path learns your name,
until your longing becomes workmanship,
until your inner life stops being only words
and becomes a place people can live in.
