settle down

the stars told me it’s a bad time to settle down.
nevertheless,
i was told that before you lay a foundation, you build a frame:
and this was the scene where i’d been pausing, hovering cautiously with two fingers crossed and my eyes closed. the summer came and left me anemic and shivering, too weak to build, too neurotic to solve problems. i was useless in many ways.

but there i was in a blink of an eye: my arms outstretched against the black
december sky, trying to conduct unseen actors in the spirit world. they moved of their own accord, but only because of the wave of my wand. my lover sent flowers to my grave. my father brushed my shoulder. my daughter shrieked in joy. i was alive in so many places –
orchestrating a miracle like this walks a fine line of delusion and faith.

eons ago, when the cost of my

alive living was no longer calculable,
i began to ask:
am i feasible?
will i meet my potential?
do i deserve a version of life that doesn’t
push a ten gauge pin slow through my chest just to enforce the message?
these are questions that can be asked over and over,
and that’s what i used to do every day for years.
you will run even in the dark if it means going somewhere new. you’ll search for light even if it means being blinded by it’s arrival. i just wanted to know i could live without the hope of dying.

when december wrapped mink blankets around my chest,
even as i found the mirror arching against my body,
the absence of tools in my pocket stunned everyone.
a stranger’s hand found mine on a dark night, violence in another decade. my friends uttered words that coaxed me into weeping, someone else locked the door. the call of responsibility slammed my shoulders into the wall, the swallow didn’t dare flinch.

this is what i’d eventually come to realize:
you can’t lay a new foundation when the former is not yet dust, still staging old stories like new ones. the actors will refuse, the audience will crave innovation. you have to close the show.

there are things you can do to renew. you can buy a sledgehammer ahead of time, you can pray to every god you’ve ever named. you can smudge the grounds, you can file your taxes. you can tell your friends and they’ll understand.

and when your body dances through the exorcism, everyone else will say it’s just a saturday night.
and there it was, older than the body i was born into, i remembered the melody and danced to it.
this is the inconvenience of the truth: once i called myself back to my body
i couldn’t ignore the rhythm any longer. it had to move how it wanted to. forgive your sedentary stillness, move beyond the curtain, in the dark, the only witness a ghost.

i can’t keep going and telling my stories without the author.
my body, the hand of my life,
wants to embrace the uncomfortable
without only naming the shame,
the cosmic leg, the baring skin.
i can’t close wounds with this kind of poem. even as i untangle myself from embarrassment,

i can’t bury the work i’ve done.

i cannot bury my body in with me inside it this time.

i will let the stories dance, i will juggle my life if it means staying alive. i’ll eclipse the light and live, i’ll sew the iron pin against my spine. i will draw plans today and build tomorrow.