skeleton woman

She's sitting here beside me and my blood is running cold.

and I know she only needs the same things I do...fire, breath, touch, water, food...heart....love....truth. Her story told. Her story heard. Held.
But she scares me. Nothing about her is easy.

She chased me all the way from the day into this night, thundering after me, bone crashing bone. The wind, tearing through the hollows of her skull, sounded like a low and terrible cry. An animal torn and lost.

Safe in my home, the fire burns and she rests in a tangle and heap as far from me as I can manage. I leave her in the dark, in the corner.

I am afraid. Her eyes, or where her eyes should be, follow me and see into me. She knows what I think. She knows what I fear. And she watches me. I feel like the rabbit in the briar sensing the patient hunger of the fox. And yet, there is more. Something else. A softness. A vulnerability. A quiet plea.

I am so tired from the chase. So nearly spent from watching the moon come and go, month after month, year after year, from the dark floor of the sea. Tired, too, of the story that cast me here. How cruelty surfaces in the place of hearts unexamined and gives reason to madness. To be thrown from such great heights into such endless depths and to lose all holds on sky and sun and laughter and what things so simply constitute life and living, to toss here...in waves and whim and the loneliness of time.

 Something from that chaos of bones and death calls to me, speaks a voice somehow that is also my own.

I have been so hungry. I did not know it until you pulled me, against your will, from the clamor of sea into that small wooden boat. Not until I found myself by the accident of your catch, entangled and hopelessly snared in the lines of your quest, did I remember the taste of food across these ragged teeth. With the speed of your escape did your day's harvest fly towards me as full of life as ever I'd known. I find my tongue awakening.  I remember what it is to be nourished. I have been so hungry. You bring me food.

I did not know I had been so empty.  That what called soundlessly from within my own body was an appetite I could not respond to; a hunger I could not hear. She reminds me.

The fire cracks and heat fills the room. The light penetrates the shadows.

I have been so cold. I did not know it until I tumbled joint over joint, limbs wound like the strings of a kite in the storm of your flight, into this hearth and haven. Not until the wind roared its violence through the maze of my design, in the sharp sea sting of air, as I thundered after you, helplessly, did I remember the feel of heat on what I once knew as skin. From the tomb of a cold, blue endlessness, I've been launched, with a quick stroke of destiny, into the glare and gleaming of this fire blazing. My blood and sinew ignite. I remember what it is to be warm. I have been so cold. You bring the heat back to me.

I did not know I had been so cold.  That winter had descended into the very pulse of my own heart. I had forgotten what I loved. Forgotten the very things that once filled my eyes with brightness; that washed me full with the heat of passion for the beautiful tugs of life. My fire had gone out. She reminds me.

Something from the very center of my own marrow begins to sing. Without knowing why, I begin to untangle and reassemble and put back where things belong. A quiver of panic surges throughout my being as I do. I am close enough to fall under some spell, to be lost forever in some underworld labyrinth. I build the alignment, with a shot of courage. It may be a foolish risk, I argue, but there is something braver still calling me to the task. I sing "oh na na na.........oh na na na"  and I surrender to the trance of this hardest work.  There, there, I soothe, I am here to untangle you finally.  Ever still, I shiver at the close face of every fear I've held, shimmering at me with the translucent mirrors of the sea. The hiss and stench of death hangs in a thick cloud around us. I am too afraid to stop, and instead I busy my fingers with the unthreading of weed and bone to reclaim and recover the organization of a form that is not so different from my own.

I have been so lost. I did not know the direction of sky from the gravity of sea. Not until you placed my toes down, restored the length of leg, brought space to this cage of bones, did I remember I once danced. That once I'd lived on the top of the waves and knew the spin of delight and the leap of joy. I dare not breathe too fully yet, for fear you may all at once collect me in a heap and return me to the crashing surf.

It is done.  I step back and turn my gaze this way and that to witness what lies in front of me. Still lifeless, full of the dank threat of nothingness, I am comforted only by the vision that she once was something I am. And with a sudden horror, I am wild with the knowing that she is something I someday will be, too. All of life and death spins like shrieking birds around my thoughts and I fall long and heavy into a dream I cannot wake from.

You sleep now. I am so much more who I am because of your kindness. I hardly remember how to feel, but I do. I watch you now. You, singer of life. You, who were bold enough to extend your hand into my most broken places and mend, mend, mend. You, who saw past the disaster and unfolded the unnatural bends and breaks to touch and soothe. You, who stared at the death mask squarely and still, offered the return to life.  Only now do I remember something....

And so, you are dreaming. Of what, I cannot guess. I watch you dreaming and see the effortlessness of sorrow on your face.

I am so thirsty. I did not know it until you shed the single tear. That simple drop of water, as salty as the sea from which I've lived. But this sea smells different. There is something of life and love and sadness and longing, and I am so thirsty. I will myself to remember the bending and bracing, the hover into momentum, to crawl myself along this wooden floor to you and your tear.  To you, I stack bone after bone and by sheer miracle do I manage these long fingers and these worn thin limbs toward you to drink. I drink, drink, drink an entire ocean from your single, sad sorrow and the alchemy begins.

A flood of blood and breath and a circuitry of lightning fast life charges into the spaces that have borne vacancy for ages. My skin grows cell after cell and wraps its newness around the skeleton of time, time, time.  A softness fills into the rounding flesh and hair grows long and full in this sudden springtime.

I sing now.

FLESH! FLESH! FLESH!

My new wild eyes dart and search and see you there with your still so sorrowful sleep and I reach into your broad chest and emerge with a full, pulsing, beating heart.

This is the most sacred sanctuary of you and I hold it like a tiny bird, with a delicate reverence and awe. This heart, my rescuer and kindred warrior, sings loud to me now and so I sing, too. And I drum, drum, and drum.

All of me is returned and I dance full and round, crying the tears of every joy and grief the world has ever held. I kiss your heart and give it back to your breathing body and know that I am part of you and you are everafter part of me.  And with the shiver of new skin, I crawl my naked self to lie beside your naked self and feel the ignition of heat and fire and life coming to life. Up from dreams and into dreams we rise and fall and surrender to the collisions of life and death, beginnings and endings and mostly, full bodied joy and a love given in allness.

From here the story continues with this place I am now. It renews itself with itself.  From a dream I woke and into a dream I fell, and I continue to remember that between two days is a night. Only from death can life emerge. And so it goes, so it goes....

She's still sitting here beside me, and I too, am sitting beside her.  Evermore and everafter, as the moon in all her phases, as the sea in all her timelessness.

(Copyright. 2007. S. Azar)