The many lives I lived before
Are laid out before me
Like diverging hallways
Echoing
Each door
Wanting to be known
A will-o’-wisp leads me through the chambers
bouncing merrily along the dark, stone, castle corridor
She is the only light in the darkness, but for the dim, flickering, lanterns which adorn the walls,
The wisp looks like the floating ghost of a dog,
or perhaps a butterfly,
It’s hard to tell,
She keeps shifting and changing shape,
At times she turns to nothingness,
Her form stretches outwards into thin air and then returns to itself,
She nearly disappears every time she turns a corner,
I find myself having to walk faster and faster just to keep up,
After a long time of chasing the wisp, we reach an ancient door,
Green, wooden, and covered in moss and vines,
The wisp slyly opens the door and pulls me through,
My body is lifted up into the heavens,
I feel myself drenched in coldness,
As if I am naked in snow,
Consumed by ice,
And I find that I am frozen stiff, completely unable to move,
And yet, I am moving at incredible speed, faster than I have ever traveled before,
And then – with no warning –
I land
Thud!
Heavy as lead
I feel the hard crunch of dirt and grass beneath my feet

And that’s when I see myself
The way I was before
In this other life
How very strange to be looking at another version of myself
She is me and she is not me all at once
She was completely forgotten to me in my consciousness
And yet, it’s very clear she was known to me all along
I can hardly catch my breath

I know now that the past is not an echo
It’s alive

-Lucy Schwartz

Note: I do not own the photographs included in this post, but I always try to link the photographs to their original source (when I can find it). If you want to find out more about the beautiful images & the photographers you can click on the images.