Light grew weak at the edges, a horizon’s blush. I had left early to beat the sun. In my seat I felt settled like a stone dropped into water, better homed at the bottom than at the water’s edge. I remembered my place next to her and her and him. Siblings. A straight line and a few dotted ones. I could leave like it was a friend’s party, but instead I remembered that they were souls I saw born. In the waiting room or beside them, cutting the cord. I had somehow made the right decision and being with them reminded me.
But I had to get home. From the air this land spills in swirls. Amoeba shaped agriculture. Earthside these swirls hugged in: the lead-weight of moisture. A ribbon of it clung to my top lip, to the congregation of leaves, song-singing of grass – oh pregnancy is more than human!
I rolled the windows down. 50 miles per hour. 57. 60. It is easy to swallow the breeze. I let it fit all around me as I divided the road in half. I turned the music on.
Oui, je t’aime
Oui, je t’aime
A demain, a la prochaine
I know it’s best to say goodbye
But I can’t seem to move away
Not to say, not to say
That you shouldn’t share the blame
There is a softness to your touch
There is a wonder to your ways
II.
We were careless in our attempts to fly. Not knowing we didn’t have the hollow bones of birds, I joined the boys in jumping from the top of the hill. Running and rushing then falling and fumbling. Braids of grass made from our bodies crashing left, then right. I chased them into what felt like certain death for the temporary feeling of agency and freedom. They got away with a lot. Soon, so did I.
III.
I moved us forward like two separate circles that had been separated in some ancient spell. I loved with the weight of thunder, breaking open the sky with my electricity and terror. I wanted our circles to merge, to blend in an incalculable, holy love.
But some circles do not want to be moved.
I have been motivated by a union since I was a young mammal, from mother to father to grandfather to grandmother to neighborhood boy to boyfriend to fiance to husband. I pressed on in the rain to bend my knee and take his name, but he was unsure, unmoved, like so many before him.
IV.
I sing Sapho in the hot Roman sun and wonder what we’re all doing here. How for millenia we have sought the warm hand of another, somehow trusting that we would be caught. That the old symbols would be made anew, that something would pierce the separateness and make it all worth something.
I feel the sun flood me, the architecture of my face: its bones and soft tissue. My eyes twitch in sympathy as I observe the bride, so in awe to be witnessed, for once. Somehow, I think this is why we do this – for the infinitesimally small chance of being witnessed. To join circles, the sun and moon in jagged eclipse.
