Chapter 3: The Third Dance – Anniversary

I’m not yet twenty-four.
Does that surprise you?
I can’t help but find myself feeling like an ailing heiress
            or sickly nun,
                    counting out my days in silence, in solitude.

I’m not yet twenty-four,
            each passing year a testimony and vigil for my sisters,
                     the ones who have not and will not survive to meet me here.
Sometimes I’m not sure I will either,
            but I remember that in these bones a coward resides.
I make and will make no motion to the door,
            physical or eternal.

After seven hundred days, and at least seven years before,
I no longer believe it fair to call myself
             alive. How could I be?
I accepted this as fact long ago.
The only argument that remains is whether I am real at all?

Could it be that I passed in my sleep,
             now bound to these walls as a hollow shade,
                        ghast-like and hopefully
              more than a little enchanting?

I can’t remember when last I ate or drank.
It couldn’t be days.
Could it?

If someone doesn’t eat,
             hardly sleeps at night
                       but always through the entire morning,
cannot leave these walls,
             struggles to remember the last companion they spoke to,
                        cannot recall when last they were held tenderly,

and yet makes no plans for remedy,
             are they still among the living?
I would like to count myself,
And yet I would also like to be free of this confinement.
We often must accept difficult truths.

Twenty-three has yet to kill me,
              another year stolen.
Am I too expectant that twenty-four will?
How long can an animal be kept in captivity,
             alive by all measure to themselves and their audience,
                           and yet dead to all those who loved them?

I pray to the Goddess for an audience,
             distraught vespers through the endless and beloved night.
I long for my chance to perform,
              in slippers and tights and sleek fabric,
                        finally entranced into the rites I was owed and denied.
I sigh and enter into my vision once more.

 

******

Tonight, I would be a ballerina - if,
I could be a ballerina.

To feel the grace and elegance in me,
I think I could put everything else to rest.

In my arms, across my skin, the warm embrace of spandex and tartalan,
I could fall in love again.

What would it be like to feel beautiful like that?
It fills my lungs with aching contentment.

I’d be a tall ballerina, but that wouldn’t be an issue.
Do you think it could be an issue?

I take myself too seriously. I ask too many questions.
I don’t think good ballerinas take themselves too seriously.

There is a freedom in that dance, in my body.
I’ve looked and prodded so many bumps and curves

and can’t find it yet. But it’s there.

******

 

Has morning passed already?
The afternoon has gone along with it,
              so sudden and serious and savage.
I return to the safety of night,
              the only hours I can believe I exist beyond myself.
It is only at night that I can dream and be dreamt of.

I have lost track of the days, never one for calendars,
              and yet I know that tonight is the night.
Like solstice, my anniversary knows that spirits may come through
              and find me.

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They are in my walls, and for a few hours,
              the boundaries between myself and myself are weakened.
The phantasmic apparitions come to me
               neither their queen nor their enemy,
                          parading through each and every shadow
                                     as I turn to keep eyes fixed upon their jumping forms.

They sing, wretched and hoarse:

No, that cannot be
Sweet sister it cannot be
You are what you are
we are what we are
and you know that it cannot be.

I press my hands to my ears to push them out,
             yet the siren song has already polluted my mind.
It circles around like a vulture,
             ready to feast and be engorged
                       as doubt lays bare against the rocks.
A mind and heart unprepared to meet itself
             disappears into some void;

vanishes into the space between worlds
             where you might witness mountains dance and quiver
                       if you could ever sustain your glare long enough.

Vespers and shades both feed from this vault inside a soul.
But are they real?

Even if only present for you,
you cannot be haunted by a ghost
that does not exist.

On this, the most sacred of anniversary,
            the revenants are not so cruel and thoughtless
                     to pry without purpose.
As I tremble under my sheets,
            they whisper once more,

You are alive,
            sweet sister,
                     and cannot be contained.
Our lips sing your vengeance,
            plead for your acquittal.
We would see you free
         and glorious
                                   and free
         and glorified
                                   and free
          and beautied.

My tears dry as my only company escapes me,
          its business called elsewhere.
In their wisdom I let myself dive -
          dive down inside the firmament within.

I take the cup and reopen the ocean,
           standing on its surface like glass
like Jesus on water,
           illuminated beyond the depths.

I look down and truly understand
          the vastness of the soul,
                   connected to the heartbeat
                             of a mother in mourning.

Water flows through her ground like veins,
          magma traverses like artery -
                     the beating heart in the Core
                                as we twirl with the sun and star.

I stand upon her skin,
           my own flesh her generous gift,
                     and she weeps for my shackles,
                                 carved from her own breast.

Outside my window, I hear her tears trickle,
            wet and sloppy and blessed with life and death.
Somehow, she can cry for the whole of us all,
             and yet I know she sees me.
As the anniversary passes,
             as my confidence of breath in my lungs presides,
I succumb to the gentle kiss of sleep.

 

******

You can fear the Deep. You can resent it.
You can gaze in,
hoping to plumb its secrets -
it is there all the same.

Vertigo reminds you of your humanity.
A fear of heights reminds you it can go higher.

The Goddess will not touch me tonight,
and the beast and I share a cool exhale,
         captive
                       and captor
         lover
                       and hunter
         friend
                       and enemy

sleeping walls away in something I hope can be called peace.

 

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