cast.

over 300 lines to learn and each night, the dark descends and tells me I can't do this.
it is something to behold to witness myself walking right off the edge of the mountain.
right now there is still time to turn around and call it all a big mistake, I assure myself. maybe in the morning, I coo, I will pull the big eraser out and go back to the fence lines I'm accustomed to. shhhh, it will all be fine, I can sleep through the night. it's not here.
though,something strange happens each morning.
with the light of day I am resurrected with bravery and a full sense of the brevity of life and grasping opportunities as they land in my lap.
And, here, in my lap is a smoldering woman who descends a staircase with passion and forgiveness and she is a puzzle that I am called to reveal.
In turning her over and folding back her pages, I suspect my own bones will show. My own naked journey slides under the spotlight and stands without guard.
How terrified I am of rooms with no doors. How brazenly I move to draw my sword.

a song for si.

it is the time of ghosts.
one thousand and ninety five days ago, you kicked me in the ass and left the planet and handed me the keys to my cage. forty days later I stood in the sea and screamed my goodbyes.
i walked through the walls of newspaper clippings, broken doors and dirty mystery knowing i was not there and that i would have to find a way of retrieval after all of this was over.
all of this strange sickness and bracing investigation of hypodermic needles, pasco county sherrifs, stolen cars, lost cats, a criminal caretaker, a Russian wife, women's rights literature and sociopathic perfume lingering in the fabric of this confused circus. you, so frail and viscious, conversing with shadows and suspects, trying desperately to assert your final will against the bone wracking pain and swift rushing of death. even your passing evoked such violence and fury.
hanging now in a thin grey frame of bones, the fear in you persists in missile launching, with such surprising accuracy. you leave with the final words splitting from your tongue like acid, seran gas, napalm.....
breaking love against your wisp of a thigh with a force of a freight train.
there is no time to repair the damage before you go. there is no possibility to repair the damage even if you stayed.

we gathered in this crevice of the universe that housed the terrors, curled against each other and dreamed you on your journey, burned the fire through the night and told a handful of broken stories around the scattered photographs of everything that boiled down to your life here, read your secret love letters and silently sang our farewells. the folded paper still travels with me and i still struggle to believe it and i still live with the stone in my heart that, even in this last opportunity, it was all about you and nothing about me; in some ways, the final chance to bear down with the heel of your boot and grind those broken shards of glass into nothing but dust. there is so much sorrow for a never was and never will be.

and this story is not a story about a ghost. you are gone and gone forever, but for the indelible fingerprints of your crimes. you are as much substance as a memory and no more; dissolved and submerged like a grain of salt in an infinite sea.  a grain, enormously full of sadness and sorrow and fear. of you and me, there is only me, emerging more, moment to moment, from the impossible and terrible story of you.

cranium.

begin with skin,
and descend.
to bone
and the dura,
the subdural space where she finds the stillness that allows enough room for her whole body to breathe,
the arachnoid,
and subarachnoid space,
the pia and
the gelatinous soft as jello powerhouse lives in all it's power
and vulnerability.

your hands, only for a moment, touch lightly
and my throat is strangled and my air is caught.
I try to yawn, to stretch it away from me, and I am like a dying fish, struggling for water.
the place where bees buzzed hides the impulse of agitation.
my legs kick like a downed wire.
my belly aches and pulls at my heart until there is touch to the pericardium, touch to the diaphragm, touch to the lungs.
there is a cry for help that cannot cry for help. wait.
listen. support.

after some time,
a deep yawn, a stutter, another yawn, a hestitation....
an unfolding, unraveling gather of cries swims in a golden breath.

little grey corvette.

it comes back to this. you. me. the tyranny of terror. all locked in tight and waiting, like winter.
like a season of a thousand ages. frozen. tight. trapped.

it begins with the courage to learn how to fly again.
walking the dust and mud for so long has me curious and frustrated.
I need to bear the embarrassment and ask. for. help.

help.

me.

I don't want to get in that car. I don't want to go to Gainesville. I don't want to go with you. I want to stay home.

help. me.

seated in the corner chair in a ground floor room.

little grey corvette

seated in a corner chair in a ground floor room of the Holiday Inn Express in Asheville, my feet stand planted on the carpet. I am here to learn how to fly again.

If I attempt to remember where it started, I come up empty handed but my hands flutter away from my sides and I'm asked to pause and wait and listen and wait. My awareness drops down to the outward bracing of my thighs; the way my calves and ankles have dug in for leverage. I'm locked and loaded like a stone statue; so taut with readiness I cannot move. He touches the edges of my hands and I edge outwards with an irritated frustration. I don't want to do this. it's a voice deeper than now, so I just listen. I don't want to do this; more anger now. The me that is witnessing does want to do this. I listen. yes.

and, I talk about Canada and the why I left. and, I talk about Seattle and the way I left. both, alone. both, in their own way, left me feeling trapped. 

and, for a while, my legs and arms spoke and all I did was follow them.

and, I was inside angry and slightly about to cry and frustrated and a little bit irritated. I didn't know what was going on and I wanted some explanations. But, I knew it was a hollow question so I didn't ask.
The space between my shoulder blades allowed me to take deep breaths. So I did.

I wasn't sure where I was or where I was going. There was the horrible relationship, and the Russian invasion unmentioned, both so bad I had no choice but to leave the land I loved. There was a flight back to Florida, a redeye, with my own row of seats and a dumb enough movie to let me sleep. There was my sister who didn't give a shit about my grief (and there was my neck moving...moving...moving). There was the trip to Paris which stretched me far too far out of my own range of tolerance; the flight cancellations, the tremor of the 2 weeks away and the, I didn't get a chance to mention, neptunian proposal.

I didn't think it would bring me here. 

Not the planes, trains, boats and buses...but, the cars. and then, the car.

I've circled around and around and I'm right back here with you. and me. and the tyranny of terror.

Though I thought I'd been done with this story, here it is again. Though, once I was an animal and you, strewn about the highway, here it is again. A different lens is needed perhaps. Somehow we are here again.

I didn't want to go. Didn't want to go with you. I didn't want to go.
And, I pleaded and you insisted. And, I tried so very hard to stay. But, I was wrenched away from holding the doorways, even though I held with all my strength. I couldn't fight you. I couldn't run. I couldn't get away.
Of course, I would've exploded the doorway with all my rage and will if I could have.

It might have started with the "ung" sound; high pitched and circling the vault of my skull. I think, maybe, it is meant to disturb the hibernation of the dorsal. It did. I sung it a few times and grew increasingly agitated. My head felt full of bees and an aggravation that raced down to the restlessness of my feet and ankles organized into a full run. I remembered sprinting and racing and feeling the rush of speed.
Run and hear what voice is in my head.
Let me out, you motherfucker! Let me out!
and run, run, run.
I'm a sprinter and a long distance runner.    of course, I am.   it makes so much sense.
get the fuck out of there and go far far away. 50 yards just isn't gonna cut it.

I run for a long time with a curious witness noticing it's my right leg doing all the work. Poor left leg is having some organizational challenges. They both run and run and run.

I need to get out of the car. at some point, I choose.
And holding the end of broken rubber elastic, I'm given the scissors and the invitation to free myself from you, from the car, whenever I am ready.
oh, I am fucking ready.
Snip.
and, a quiet descends and then a great and thick heaviness bears down on my right arm and right side.

imagine myself in the passenger side of the car. more heaviness.
of course it would be difficult to move.
but, I begin to turn to look out the window. slowly.
I make room for myself as i watch and wait for my arm.
It wants to reach for the door handle. Yes, of course.
and, then I want to open the door and fall out even if the car is traveling at 75 mph. I don't care. I want the fuck out of this fucking car.
what would I fall into?
the parachute material, moonwalk jumping thing, stuntman billowy soft fabric that gives way and prevents any feeling of hard impact. that stuff.
ok. when you're ready.
then I think of the train that tanja and I jumped in BC near the Gelato store, just for the thrill of it. And, the big oops we had when we realized we didn't know where we were going and maybe we should get off and, wow, from the ground the train looked like it was going pretty slow but from up here, it is pretty pretty fast and we better jump now or it could get faster and boom, ouch, into the rocks and gravel, we take courageous leaps and bloody our hands and jack up our heart rates and briskly skim the real possibility that we could've died in that one big dumb moment.....
and,
ok. when you're ready.
here, there's a big ol' comfy net...so, yeah....here I go.
boom, no ouch, and soft and slow, I open the door and step out into the whirring speed and away from the little grey, I hate that motherfucking car, corvette and into my escape and freedom. Me and all the space I need and fuck you, keep going, drive all the way to gainesville and far away from me.

then I push the wall behind me in my rebounded recovery...it feels so good to push. rrrrrrrrrrrr. push!!!

I sit in the dark, under the stars, inside my own parked car on the passenger's side and I listen.
to the heaviness, to the throb of muscles and blood reorganizing, to the remembrance of the space around me and the space inside me. I can move and float my arms away and all around myself. in small ways, I feel that impulse but, it remains humble and subtle. I wait and listen. I look out the window at the trees in my yard, feeling the surge of love that I have for this place, this home, this life. I feel such deep gratitude for being here as I am now; through the terror and threats to life. I'm actually here now and feeling alive. HOW?
what miracles have blessed me.
I sit in this perfect and still darkness and listen...my hand reaches to open the door and as I do, I have to push the weight of it away from me. That's it, that's the weight, that's the push. My smart, smart body knows everything it needs. Push the door away. Push myself to standing. Step into my freedom.

the end of wait.

maybe it takes the sweat of a hot room to bring me back to my voice.
i've been away.
it's always a kind of stutter to return.
staccato.
one syllable at a time.
it'll come.
just go to the edge and wait.....

it's day 4 of a six month challenge this time.
I'm up for it.
feeling the asymmetry of hips and legs; feeling the clarity of right contrast the pull and torque of left.
there's room here and no room there.
there are surprises.
there is patience in my muscles.
there is love in my heart...and gratitude.
I feel lucky to dance with my own blossoming wisdom.
It feels powerful to simply show up.

and, somehow...this practice, wrings my language out of me and the words begin to drop like water.
in so many ways, I am returned to right here; where I have been standing all along.

thank you for waiting for me.

T plus four

"there was a whole lot of living between T minus Zero and the big T. think of that," he smiled as a wall sized wave of heat flooded down my body.
I'm thinking of that, now.
I'm thinking of that, now, nestled in the T plus 4, curled like a ribbon in this heart shaped bed, shimmering.

today, I swept my arm like a rainbow and delighted at the sound of spines and pages catching air, soaring thickly towards the thin tread of carpet. today, I lit the firecracker and roared with the squeal of tires and grass spun like paint behind me and the great getaway. I thought I had to be fearless to be so angry. I thought I had to be tougher to really take it on as a lifestyle.

"It was a time when I was flying solo," I repeated, still curious about the irony of the words. "...and, it's like the ground or sky don't matter; I trust myself. I can fall, fly, close my eyes and not know where I am and, yet, I know where I am and I know how to have soft landings and how to have fun in the disorientation. In that kind of flying, I'm most alive."
Again with the irony.

what a surprising thing I've said.
With this, my arms crackle like a fire and a sky inhabits my chest.

stories.

there is a beginning that starts with a story. it is a story of loss.
in the telling, we tumble and sift through touches. we listen...

...and listen.

my breathing falls into the space above me.
your weight is my weight and it leans into the wooden fence where wind meets my belly.
in front of me, my eyes gather a field of long grass.
there is the sense of horses.

i remember this soft stroke of scent; the perfume of alfalfa, fescue and sweet grain rising from a velvet kiss.
inside, my bones are shifting and singing the memory of a true love.

there is a story that begins with a loss. it is the start of the sifting through.
in the tumbling, we touch and start to tell...

....and listen.

we move to a common grief. a known geography. a familiar pull. a private understanding.
your gesture is mine echoed back to me and mine is a reflection back to you.
in the chaos, there is order.
each string rings into a coherent dissonance.
here my hands carve syllables that you may read aloud.

please, tell me again...
i want to hear, this time, with the soles of my feet.

and again,
so i can taste the sweetness of a word.