Earlier this year, I started on a writing project. It’s still taking form. I’m having a lot of fun when I write, but I find that I get overwhelmed as soon as my writing goes beyond a few pages. So, I decided to start with short story—that’s both a piece of something larger and wishes to stand on its own—exploring the lifetimes we live before our birth.
English is not the best language to share our story, but due to popular demand, I’ve agreed to take on this monumental task: translating our experience into a tongue that cannot fully capture it. Thank you for your grace in knowing there are stories I simply cannot tell—stories you will have to dance along to experience, instead of read. With that, I begin, not at the beginning, but before that, in death.
I was born Ujuli (oo-HOO-lee), one who both is and carries the day sun and night sun. Always opposed and always in sync.
Every dawn I am reborn. Every nightfall I die. On the full night sun, I rise even as I fall. I carry and am the responsibility of two suns. I must shine so brightly as to illuminate everything without exhausting before it is time to exhaust. Some nights I carry yet am no moon at all. I needn’t hold space for my light and am afforded sweet, momentary rest. People wonder why I cannot be as consistent as a single day sun, but I am two and must both light and carry the night sun, so I do not wonder. Though I am constantly wandering.
To stay still would be to throw off the rhythms of the milkweed and willows, the waters and bison, the clams and acorns, the winds and fire. To stay still would be to die before I am meant to die.
Before I was born Ujuli, I am possibility nestled inside of my womb mother, they themself possibility nestled inside of their womb mother, my ma’mama. I dream in a language I can’t yet speak of swirling colors and murmurred emotions. I feel the rhythms of the moons and the heartbeats of the Earth, a symphony of cacophonies that reverberate my solitary cell. Already, I sense I’m a vessel for something far beyond the ordinary.
Before then, I am possibility—vast and unseen by our earth eyes, trembling at the edge of existence. I have chosen my womb mother, suspended between being and not-being, nearly formless and likely to dissolve before becoming more than a phantom of sensation. My existence a spiritual darkness vaster than all of creation with a melancholy that aches beneath what we can hear, beneath bones, in the ether of ancient grizzly bear monstres.
I do not know what comes after this death that comes before I couple into ONE, but I already know fear that swallows little ones like me whole. This is all of what I know of being possibility inside of possibility.
I do not know the day my womb mother separated from their womb mother. Elders will later tell me how the fireflies lit a galaxy above the fire as the moon was dying. This, they will tell me, is why mother’s father named them the equivalent of Bright New Moon. And with this, they will swoon over how ma’dada’s eyes sparkled brighter than two Awakened Suns.
What I do know: this is when I learn yearn. I am now one less possibility closer to being. As vast as fear, yearn is all I can contain. Always, I am at risk of bursting through my edges and ceasing to exist. Always, I yearn to exist beyond possibility. I yearned for myself to couple, to feel satiated, to feel expansion, to feel a new kind of whole, to feel relief from the monotony of this compulsion, to experience something new, to revel in the newness of ONEness. For six and six and two Suns, I know only yearn.
Somewhere in the ecstatic stillness of time and quiet frenzy of possibility, a collision will assign me a father and a creation assignment. Future kin will tell me that a choice was made by me. I will do my best to believe them, as I have no recollection of choice. I can only tell you about fear and yearn and my obsession and single-focus to become more than possibility. I am only a QeeQeeQee falcon in its spiral stoop, where time suspends as I fly faster than the wheel and see only my “prey”—my other self. I’ve been in this loop for my forever, I can hardly contain myself when it’s interrupted. In fact, I can’t contain myself. I burst. I die my first death. My first familiar finds me and our yearns unite—and it’s simply too much for either of us on our own. We unite to expand, trying to contain this thundering ONEness and ecstatic relief from a forever of yearn.
I was whole until I realized I wasn’t, and then I was whole again—this is what I’ll come to learn of death.
And still, I’m only a part of my mother. Still, I’m only possibility, but now I am possibility backed by the strength of creation: I am a wellspring of eternal cell creation. I am growing, or at least I will be within a moon’s whisper—it takes a moment to recover and reorganize as my new self.
It’s said that when we unite inside of our womb mother, that we are re-uniting from a split we cannot remember. A part of us, complete on its own, chooses our mother. And another part of us, complete on its own, chooses our father. We cannot fully know what we are choosing, but it is our first lesson in commitment, one that, frankly, I’m still learning. This is the choice my future kin will remind me of later, as I threaten our social structure.
Before I know words, I know sounds, light, taste, and a fierce interoception as to the daily stretching of my forming bones, lungs, heart, liver, skin. A rise in elongation of the distance between waves and a drop from the valleys to the peaks of sounds slow the cadence of my heart; my hands unfurl; and I forget for the luxurious moments inside of a split second what had been preoccupying me. Before I know words, I know sounds.
I soak in the gentle tones of my mother’s musical voice, the melodies of my father’s songs, the echos of my heartbeat harmonizing with mama’s. I revel in the choir of birds greeting light and the hush of silence saturating darkness. I learn the rhythms of touch and of dance and of rocking. All these sounds, I learn, are love.
I’m saturated with curiosity inside the newness of every moment, every moment inviting me into expansive exploration. What am I becoming? What do I do with all that I’m creating? When will enough become enough? What will feeling complete feel like? And what happens then? I am me, yet I am still a part of my mama. Are my questions theirs? I know nothing constant until I’ve run out of room to grow, at the forgotten but familiar precipice of yearn.
Mama tells me they can no longer contain me. My possibility has finally outgrown them. Mama will burst and we (who is singular and both mama and me) will die.
And so, it’s here that I die my second death. Here, I take my first breath in our breathing life in the year of the extra moon, Sanajara. Named for the guardian of fire, Sanajara’s moon brings ravenous flames more fierce as any our elders have known, and they are the keepers of our ancestors’ tales. Mama Bright New Moon says I carried us to safety through fire and birth. And so, the first name I earn is Ujuli—one who both is and carries the sun and moon.
If a name is a prophecy, a blessing and a burden, I do not yet know mine. The elders say that children born in the year of Sanajara carry fire in their blood, destined to transform everything we touch. But what transforms can also destroy.
