jane

we sat together and dangled our toes into the pool.
and you put words into my hands and asked me to learn them.
protection. bravery. courage. truth.
you said, sometimes being loving and sometimes being good is not about being small.
sometimes it is about showing your teeth and keeping things precious to you safe.
your heart. your tenderness. your soul.

I remember you as a matador, in black and red.
facing off to the downstage light, illuminated in your tenacity.

I remember your green eyes shining
in fire. in joy and in pain.

fall and recover.
fall and recover.
fall and recover.

bringing poetry to class. bringing life into the dance.
wisdoms. affirmations.
It mattered to you to connect the outside with the inside,
the real with the imagined,
the language to the ephemeral.
to live the art in the offstage living, too.
it mattered to you.
it mattered to me.

I saw you as a woman living outside the edges of a deep well.
pacing and leaping and falling and laughing and crying and turning it all into colors. swirling them on pages and sending them as love notes. and sending them as eulogies. and sending them as an SOS. and sending them as breadcrumbs.
I saw your heart, big as the world,  open to love and shutter against it.

rest in peace, dear one. you will be missed.