Thoughts from a Thinking Girl

I. All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.  – Leo Tolstoy

The first time I left home

I was too young to make it out.

My desire to leave

the improbable mix

of culottes

stuffed animals

a book

chosen through tears and the reverberating rage of invisibility

amused rather than frightened my mother.

I had come to her, wanted, bidden, prayed for and well-tended

but remained unknown.

Dismissal of pain, shouldn’t that be the third story?

Or maybe the only story, the one underneath the other two –

the reason one must leave home

or cleave to the stranger.

Every time I left a home

I was the seeker

for what no one around me sought.

I journeyed and became the stranger.

Two story lines nuzzled and intertwined in perfect union

my legs and arms drew tight the pillow

against my belly.

Pretending it was a lover

I could fall asleep.

II. The universe isn’t made up of atoms. It’s made up of stories.  -Jack Kornfield

My life is made up of stories

and that cannot bode well.

Stories need arcs, plots, characters, dramatic tension

and, if we will care at all,

some kind of growth:

our heroine encounters obstacles, finally overcomes.

And what of the unheroic protagonist?

The one too frightened to change

who creates characters out of lovers

rails against one-sided villians

with explanatory models that fit part of what happened

blames others for how she fails to overcome

meets the same obstacles over and over

adheres identities – hers and others’ – in an arc she wills to satisfy

blurs the truth

in a wide swath of near-delusional self-protection

omits the way she perpetuates her own sorrow

pushes away those who want to get close

inverts the harder facts she wishes weren’t true

and doesn’t allow in

a story we don’t really want to read

as it rings of injustices

vibrates a little too familiarly

rises like bile

sinks belly-ward

through the cracked windowpane of self-doubt.

What if the stories that make up a life are ones we cannot keep reading?

III. Every story is us. That’s who we are, from beginning to no-matter-how it ends. -Rumi

Love, storied, sounds like:

you made my heart quicken with anticipation, slow with longing

your eyes were deep brown-green pools I swam in

your need rose and fell.

Love was the story I wrote over and over

rhythm as comfortable as childhood verse

we made love in iambic pentameter

I waxed poetic that you filled my heart with love.

Yet, the heart cannot be filled.

It is a hollow chamber

made mostly of water

an interchange for byways

a vessel to be filled and emptied

contracting rhythmically to its own accord.

I told the trees behind the house

and the tomato plants tipping with late-summer load

and that crafty squirrel who hung upside down to snatch birdseed from the “Squirrel-buster”

that you filled my soul.

For surely souls are fillable

filling

flowing with passion and intensity

energy and essence

entwined spirits dancing

the spritely waltz

the bluesy sway

my arm on your bicep

hips, shoulders, thighs whispering their own conversation.

I wanted love embodied

tangible

permanent

but incorporeal souls and hollow heart chambers

would not comply.

IV. “A little truth seasons a lie like salt.” ― Jacqueline Carey

I liberally season the steak that sits on the counter

oil and salt encrusted

where it will mingle with air and time and anticipation

defying present-day dictums to prevent bacterial growth

limit sodium

reduce ecological waste to produce something

luxurious and unnecessary

a one and a half-inch thick marbled ribeye

the way it will fill my mouth with temporary reprieve

that this love has ended

the sacrifice of the sacred cow

and the unsacred wife

swirl like blood and grease on the plate

yes, every bite was worth it

wasn’t it?

V. Translation is at best an echo. – George Borrow

You, too, wrote a version of our story

in a language and dialect so familiar

I tended to forget it wasn’t my native tongue.

I translated your words into my own

until nothing remained of your story

but the echo of silence.

It remains, this absence

resounds the walls of my chest

pulses the veins in my eyes

an occipital pain I used to associate with us

but I must have misread this

because you have gone

and the pain echoes on.

VI. “This story is about love, which means that it is also about hate.” ― Philip José Farmer

We are cautioned to hold off

make no art

until the wound is healed

lest we paint a scene

sculpt a form

craft a ballad

with the raw ugly energy of hate.

Hate, we say, has no place here.

Despite time –

     poetry

     therapy

     music

     friends

     meditation

     journaling

     letting go

     gratitude

     reiki

     somatics

     Nature

     God-

what remains has yet to transform into compassion

to dissipate

to soften to pity

to arise as mere shudder or wince

to lay dormant as ill feeling from a decades-old gut punch.

Yet what story should I tell in the meantime?

Your words carved fissures in the story of innocence

your loathing erased the earliest drafts of desires

your need sprayed across pages

smudged a body freshly inked into womanhood.

When ours was first a love story

I loved you

I loved you before I paid the price for loving you.

I loved you while paying the price

I loved you complicitly

as do all who love

the smells and tastes and sensations of your body

the sounds of your deep resonant voice

the rhythm of your heartbeat

the promise of you loving me

me loving you

the becoming that was foreshadowed.

Waiting makes us complicit

with political terror

racist walls

closed borders

hate speech

criminal disregard.

I will wait no more.

VII. “…when you enter another language and speak with its speakers, you become a slightly different person; you learn a different sort of world. -Kate Grenville

Soon I will leave again.

To lands unfamiliar

languages lyrical and elusive

inviting me into a different world

and oh, the siren call of being slightly different.

And yet

no longer am I tempted by the promise of being different –

none becomes different enough to please –

I have made peace with old self-loathing

self-hate has no place here.

I will speak other languages

taste and feel other worlds

lay my head on unfamiliar pillows

open my writing notebook

I will be the newly-welcomed guest

changed by the what comes next

deepened

clarified

revealed

polished

bits of not-me falling away

extraneous marble dust

riffled by the master’s hand.

I dwell within my first home –

the unnamed essence

the soul that defies being captured

by a single image

poem

story.