the unrehearsed and unforeseen

There is only one way to begin. It requires opening the mouth and letting the words out one by one. Not the ones you’d rehearsed days ago, lying awake and over-alert at 3 o’clock in the morning, playing an impossible movie reel of unformed narratives, wispy stories so far from rootedness they couldn’t be held down, stories disassembling the moment they hit air. First you have to let these go, trot them out on the gangplank and point them seaward. Only then, empty of a trajectory of lines, can the necessary breath gather in your lungs. Nothing will come out the way you want. The room will be full of happy, colliding revelers. The music will be loud and careen through any available space, like spilled water on a kitchen floor. The bartender will come too quickly for your drink order. The line will be long and restless behind you. What you say will be imperfect. You will leave out the request for more ice, or light on the salt, or not in that tippy martini glass, please. No matter. The unrehearsed and unforeseen will arrive at the doorway of your lips. Language will come at you like jazz, like fireflies, like the sweet pickle you would have sworn was tart, like the late October snowstorm that disabled the power lines for days. How you long for dress rehearsals, official replays, schoolyard do-overs, but really, if you level yourself to the gift of the unknowable present, you wouldn’t be able to stand the repetition. The rawness moves you, emboldens you, humbles you all at once. If you knew how the ending turned out, you would lose your voice on the practice runs. Improvisation keeps you stretching and supple, permeable and soft as linen, the what-comes-after your great reward for all that sweet fumbling. Perhaps it will comfort you to know that perfect timing is both oxymoron and inevitability. What happens now could happen no other way, even the elephant thud of your footsteps. It is a dance no matter what. The plucky string release of song, tangled and unfamiliar though it may be. Let yourself sing. Let your muscles shoring back the syllables of your deepest truth grow weary of defense. Your throat is all flesh and forgiveness, a child, a yearning, a question mark, a fragile, faulty, flickering light at the end of an irreconcilable tunnel. There is only one way to begin. Feel your life shoulder through, impertinently, like a goat nudging a wind-broken fence, insisting on making itself known, crying its little heart out for freedom.

time is not the enemy

Early spring late afternoon, diffuse light descending on the street, where a woman takes a walk toward a quiet field. A pocket of ice melts lethargically in the shadow of trees. The breeze is so slight the sound of birds lands unfiltered from the high branches. A boy lets his dog off leash, and even the retriever’s run is languid. Has there ever been a more spacious moment than now? Last week, the sense of urgency was palpable, but it was hard to name, exactly, what was calling for so much attention, like the approaching wail of an ambulance, that swivel from the driver’s seat, craning to see the telltale red flashing. Hurry, the world seems to be saying. Or get out of the way. But these aren’t the only choices. This porthole in March confirms it. I am looking out a new window. Time is not the enemy. The sky is unfolding in millimeters. A million blades of grass are just beginning to wake up.

almost full moon

and the neighbors, were they awake, would see her,
half-immersed in the outdoor tub, sneaking looks
at that dark dip where breasts converge
and the crucial line of a bathing suit top that
obfuscates the view. They would see her draw knees
to her chest and wrap hands around ankles
to pull herself together in a vague but earnest attempt
to secularize the space between them, though the wine
had lightened her grip considerably and the light
from that moon strong and bright enough to reveal
a slight blush to her cheeks, and the heat from the water
palpitating her heart so she could feel its little throb
rise to her throat. Sometimes, all there is to do
is lean into the question mark and be surrounded
by its ochre halo, let it illuminate what it will,
and shadow the rest,
as if for safekeeping.

finally, finally

There is nothing quite like driving north, alone, on an abandoned highway on the east side of Arizona in the middle of a desert at the first stirrings of November. Nothing quite like cracking open the windows and feeling the cool-tinged wind come whistling in, and knowing that no one knows where you are, exactly, and that if the car broke down right now you would have untold miles behind or in front of you to navigate for help. There is nothing quite like knowing the help you would find would be you. That after nearly two months on the road, driving your little silver Echo, you have come home to yourself in the best way, come to rely on your instincts and spontaneous wisdom, come to keep your own good company. There is nothing quite like leaning back in your seat and taking a bite of an apple you bought the day before on the ride out of Sedona, and that sweetness pixilating on your tongue, and how you know in this instant this is what freedom tastes like. There is nothing quite like the impossibly balanced boulders you pass to tell you this is the kind of life you’ve always dreamed of living, and that even if you have to go it alone you will be your own witness, and it won’t feel like alone at all. There is nothing quite like looking at the odometer that has been piling up the miles all these weeks and know that you have it in you to go even further, and how the glance at the mirror reveals eyes that are brighter than you remember, and a face you have finally, finally begun to love.