By Tanya Martinez-Cardenas

The Truth‍

I thought I was writing.

I thought I was thinking of all the words…all these “years.”

I thought I was the one who liked to write,

And yet, they weren’t my words.

To think they were so foreign

So far apart from who I thought I was

To know that something else was doing it all

That was fulfilling some type of script playing out in front of me.

Every time I wake up,

There I am.

There is an unfolding.

My thoughts think the day can be predicted

That it knows each event that will take place,

Until something happens, that sets everything in a different direction.

There is a laughter that comes from deep within

Or at least it comes from somewhere.

It’s not me.

Yet, it's what is being experienced.

How can this body feel so much?

How is my heart able to feel so much connection and energy

From itself and when others are in its proximity?

It happens to someone that isn’t me, clearly.

However, there is an experiencing of it.

All my senses come alive.

They are agents acting like tree roots

Allowing the energy flow of all that is living and breathing

To saturate me completely.

I can feel it all, even when I shut it out.

Something breathes it in and something breathes it all out.

The experiencing of so many sensations, I have come to know as

anger, frustration, anxiety, impatience, kindness, compassion, love—

It’s all here

It’s all here

This body dives in and out of it like water.

The thoughts come with so many ideas

None of them in correlation with what this body does.

There is a detachment, when you look closely.

As the mind moves chaotically,

The body does something entirely different.

How did I not notice before?

There is a story playing out in the head

The body just moves.

Two different things are going on.

Here where time rules,

This happens endlessly

Over and over.

This is a universe where stories cannot exist without time

And time cannot exist without stories.

Master weavers of words, ancient playwrights

Painted this universe with stories from the beginning.

With radio, television, film, the internet, different forms of stories appear and take shape

Through the landscape of time.

The mind says, “I lived through it all.”

But, the body never lives that story.

It was never bound to the mind, time, or stories.

All seemed to be happening to a someone,

When no one was in control

Not the mind

Not the body

Not a me.

No story, no movie ever started or played out.

It was all imagination.

We gave the stories all the meaning, we thought they had.

I could say, “You can wake up now.” But, you have never been asleep or awake.

The Truth is…you have never been.

The Truth is...The Truth has nothing to do with the story.