Reforming In Liquid
I see a pattern developing. I feel more myself and more alone. And yet I feel her here with me, twisting around me when she is thousands of miles away. It should be a celebration for us that we both do what we always wanted. I’m not sick anymore. She is not poor. We each travel worlds that we never would have known if we’d not been so parted. We would still be together but not re-arranged. Not flowing right, I guess. Vital circulation. Blood moving quick—by continent and capillary. Body moving lighter, flexing. Pressing into form. Blood water bone—the body moving fast over land, over sea and then slowing… moving slow into impossible shapes. Bone from muscle from translucent skin smoothly twisting. Her face is perfectly relaxed, still with blind peace. Occasionally she smiles and a silver tear falls. Her long leg slips softly round her neck. I wish she were moving under me. I wish she were twisting through my limbs.
Under hot lights and popcorn and the smell of the lions not able to run they are warning us to take what we can from this life. And away we go. We can move our trained bodies by free will but a double edged sword, it is. A dashing man in top hat and tails prances under the lights and swallows one, two, three long blades. He washes them down with a shard of glass. Pulls them all out smiling to a warm round of applause and he retreats, backing out of the huge room and bowing all the way. We’ve moved on our own accord, worked our whole lives to be what we were meant to be. Do our work. And lo, it’s a place where we are not together. She is away all the time and I am gone too—realizing myself without her. I am being born and she is not here to witness it. She is in her element at last and I am not there to watch her inventing each new stance, naked and poised.
There’s a peace that comes from doing what your hands were meant to do. But I wish she was there when I got done with my work and she would twist up in my legs and touch me with those impossible fingers. She is in the big circus. Captivating and just. Neck of liquid oyster shell. Eyes of pure water. Legs of merciful stems. Lips of alstromeria. Master of motion and space. Twisting into the shape of white clay collapsing on the wheel and reforming as a cistern so fine that she is transparent. The spotlight shines there and she twists again. Fast faster faster until the audience can not be seated any longer. They want to run to her. I want to run to her and kiss her whirling hands and say I love you. Her sounds shoot around the grand tents of the great continents and the USA.
All the Americas will witness this great circus one day. She will be recognized for the prize that she is. She will transcend the bounds that labeled her, confined her and twist and bend into impossible motion and everyone will laugh and cry with her. Cry with her because she is changed—not an innocent any longer. She is singed a little bit and though she can do things that no one else can she is now the same as all of us… with a dark spot that was once pink like the lung of a young wild lamb. Even Brazil and soon Japan—maybe the far east next year. She will be beautiful in the shadow of abandoned architecture swallowed by tree and leechee and worms. She is long and fair. She will be honored there as a beauty with hands of this god or that. The big circus, the caravan. The troop is flawless each night—perfection revisited and made brighter each nite in the great tent. At the sight of her the applause is deafening. Nelina slips her shoulder under her brow through her legs and swan neck turns slowly to the stem of a great blossom. Little gasps fill the room. A bouquet is tossed and lands at her hands which support her skyward body in stop-motion. Her long fingers shake a little, pulling a petal to her mouth. She twists endless again, listening to the sound of the Whurlitzer, the zither, the bassoon and the tom toms.
I will see you in Paris. I will see you in New York, SF, Rome. I’ll see you in Eagle Rock, Glendale, Big Sur. I will see you every night when I shut my eyes and every morning when I wake. I feel you here moving under me, through me. So fucking real in my empty hands.
