Unbelieving.

I wore mud for shoes.

The branches and leaves joined above my head to form the only roof, the only shelter I needed.  I would feel the waves of wind approaching through the forest canopy, and when the wave reached where I stood, I would know whatever it was I needed to know.

 I listened to the wind, and sometimes in the more extreme moments of self-important-hippiness, I believed the wind listened to me.  That wind, it carried my messages to friends on the other side of the forest, the other side of the country.  It was before facebook and mobile phones and we didn't even have radios and I utterly completely truly believed in the ability for us all to communicate through the bare soles of our feet that grew like tree roots to meet in the core of the earth; transmitting not just gooshy hippy love vibes, but a message that the main village camp needed someone to turn up with a car.   Breath carried on the wind as radio waves.  Tweeting without # in front of your name.

I believed in my dreams, so much so that others did too. 

I saw significance in where spider webs crossed  paths through the forest, and knew that a certain crack in the pavement at the end of the High street mall was where I would inevitably bump into the friends I needed to bump into.  

I believed in The Other Side.  I believed one could speak with the dead and feel their presence.

I believed I would always find a way.  I believed in My Way.  That there would always be enough.  I was penniless but never poor.
I believed in Signs.  

Then my baby died.
 I stopped believing in anything.   My only certainty: there was and is and will always be grief.
Only his blood left behind on the blanket that held him.  The stretch marks on my belly.  The separation of my symphysis pubis joint and the locking up of my sacral illiac joint.  The disappointed sag of my unused mama breasts.

Now, I do not dream.

Except for the dreams that I'm breastfeeding.  Then I see that my baby is dead and cold and still. Quiet and bruised.  Skin torn and blood dripping from his nose and eyes sunken into his skull.  Meconium stained eyebrows.
 The milk either wont come, or it will but he can't drink it and I am a wasted spring  feeding not life, but death.

I feed death.  I gave birth to death.  I carried death in the womb created for life.
 I am Kali now.

Even though I stopped believing in Goddesses and blessings and painting my brow with my moonblood.
 I am Kali.  Not the Kali that I once held in reverence as..mystical..awesome and beautiful in her fierceness.. the transformer.

No, I am just the fear, just the horror.  I am Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now, sitting in the dark cave, whispering "The Horror The Horror".

Grief negates.  It wipes clean everything that I was, that I thought I was. 

There is freedom in the negation.  I can believe in anything I want.  Or nothing.

Maybe one day I'll hear something in the wind again.  For now, I cringe from the wind.  Its breath tears my skin.

I clean my feet meticulously, no traces of mud left.  I wear shoes everywhere I go.  My feet are soft.  I like them like that.

I believe in clean feet.

These are not my bare feet.  But they do look clean and I quite like them.