---

They shimmer beneath the Blue Ridge light,
scales flickering like living stained glass,
each color a forgotten prayer rising
through the clear hush of the river.

They leap without hesitation,
not to escape,
but to remember.

For the mountain fish know the secret man forgot:
gravity is only half the truth,
and wings begin where the water ends.

They leap for the joy of it,
for the knowing,
for the song of the current becoming sky.

Every arc is a resurrection,
a brief return to the freedom
that was never lost,
only unremembered.

And here in Asheville, I see them.
At Jay’s High Five Coffee on the River,
they splash joyfully after the storm,
sent downstream but never broken.

They were at PennyCup with Clementine,
at Iron and Oak with Nate and Emily,
Bridge and Tunnel with Bobby and Emma,
and the bright blue corner shop on Elkwood Avenue,
once Gallivants, now silent,
its light still lingering in the air.
Macroscopic tunneling undone, not by nature
but by human nature.
A year before the storm,
bright lights that will never dim.

My neighbors on Skyland Circle,
Harley and Scarlet, musicians of soul,
Emmie and AJ with fearless Rosie,
groundhound enthusiast and local legend.
Each a bright light,
each a mountain fish that knows
they were meant to fly.

Some have weathered greater storms than others,
but all shine through
the multicolored lens of empathy, compassion, and love.
You can feel it,
the quantum hum beneath their kindness.

And then there is Asheville Community Yoga,
a donation-based sanctuary of healing and heart.
Inside that space, the women glitter like diamonds,
lives unfolding beyond old stories
of who they were supposed to be.
To see them laughing,
living free,
brings me to tears.

Across town, the light keeps rippling outward:
Erin at Story Parlor,
Ali Marshall, AM FM Broadcast,
the Great Smokies Writing Program,
the Flatiron Writers Workshops,
all of them alive with people
who turn truth into art
and pain into light.

The creators, teachers, and students
whose words and courage keep this mountain humming,
they are mountain fish too,
diving deep, surfacing in truth,
turning their stories inside out
until they shimmer with what is real.
Each one a note in this living song,
each one proof
that when we speak from the heart,
we remember who we are.

---

The illusion of safety was born from fear,
from stories that told us love had to be earned.
We mistook appearances for safety,
the walls, the job, the mask.

But safety cannot exist
without being seen
through the lens of empathy, kindness, and compassion.
If someone cannot see your true self,
it is not safety or love,
it is a prison built from fear.

Real safety is felt, not built.

There was no malice here,
only generations of fear recycling themselves,
humans abandoned in different ways,
trusting those who would betray them,
through no fault of their own.

If I cannot see me,
I cannot see you.

Safety is not what surrounds us;
it is what flows through us,
kindness, empathy, trust in our own steps.
That is what holds.
That is what heals.
That is what love is.

---

This is for the mountain fish,
for all the people who know, deep down,
they were meant to fly.

For every soul who lifted me
through kindness, compassion, and love.
For those who saw me broken,
bloody, and bruised as hell,
and loved me anyway.

Their grace raised the tide around me,
their hearts became the current that carried me home.

When a creature that thought it could only swim learns to fly, nothing is impossible.

---

Author’s Note

I came back to Asheville because it is where my son and I once lived,
and he loved it here, as did I.
His friends were originals, artists, true to themselves.
That was what he loved most,
the freedom of being real.

I feel him everywhere here.
I came back because I love it too,
and because his love still lives in this place.

Tomorrow, October 12, 2025, at 4:30 p.m.,
Asheville Community Yoga celebrates its fifteenth anniversary.
8 Brookdale Road, Asheville, NC
ashevillecommunityyoga.org

Fifteen years of open doors, donation-based classes, and pure heart.
If you are around, come.
Come ride the wave.

They are proof that kindness and love can bend time and space,
that what physicists call quantum tunneling
is compassion moving through stone.
You can feel it in that studio,
like crossing a dark mountain stream
on slick rocks,
and somehow, love carries you safely across.

That is what this community has done for me,
lifted me up, helped me fly.

And let me tell you, this is not just poetry.
The 2025 Nobel Laureates have now seen it in the macroscopic world,
quantum tunneling, light and matter moving through solid barriers.
What they measure in a lab,
we can feel in our hearts.

This is what is happening here,
the wave of love,
the coherence of connection.
You can feel it in Asheville Community Yoga,
in this mountain air,
in every act of kindness.

This is evolution, my friends,
the next step in human consciousness,
the breaking of the glass ceiling of the mind.
It is about feeling.
It is about love reclaiming the story.
Fear built the identity; love dissolves it.
Dabrowski, you genius.

---

Epilogue

There was a winter here once
when we had no heat in that old farmhouse.
Ice grew on the inside of the windows.
He was the child I dragged through the mud of fear,
the living chain of all I did not yet understand.

For decades I searched for light,
trying to fix the past.
But it was love that finally broke the pattern,
my son’s love, steady and unconditional,
teaching me how pain can soften the eyes that see.

That is what this city has given back to me,
compassion, community,
the physics of love made visible.
I see it in the cafés,
in the yoga studios,
in every smile that meets me halfway.

I came home to find the current never stopped moving.
Love never left.

And I will spend the rest of my life saying thank you.

To trust yourself and the steps you take
is to know your own intrinsic value.
It is peace beyond understanding,
a calm with no fear of death.

To trust yourself
is to trust the frequency of love itself,
the invisible current moving through all things.
It is a truth the mind can never grasp,
but the heart can feel completely.

Published October 11, 2025, on JunkieGenius.com
in celebration of Asheville Community Yoga’s fifteenth anniversary.