I stood there, hair curling around my cheekbones and
collarbones
Lips red and pursed in coyness, hip cocked out with a flared
elbow resting on top
And he flashed a smooth blue-eyed glint, took his gun out of
the holster,
Whirled it seven times around, and shot me straight in the
heart.
Shot me down! Ouch. I was extremely pissed.
I stood up staggering, bleeding and boiling.
An entire fortress popped up around me,
Starting with a guillotine bladed gate
Guarded by a muscled little man with a poisonous tongue.
Full of a pretense of innocence and confidence, he strode in
Dubious yet persistent in crawling through the maze of
Torturous hallways, vicious gates,
chambers where the hollow of the winds hide
while fiery beasts fly shrieking from dark corners,
All fiercely letting intruders know to keep away or fight
like hell.
Somewhere deep within this guarded complex
Rose a tiny creature, flying out of the dark center, buoyant
with glitter.
And not the glitter that’s sprinkled on the cheeks of those
wishing for more magic in the world by glowing on the
outside.
From deep within her was a freely given enthusiasm for this beloved
life
That whirled so relentlessly from the perfect center of her
being
That it began to generate heat, which fizzed slowly into a
spark,
Creating a light and a glow that burst through all available
pathways in her body
And showed up at the surface, on her skin, as an incredible glowing
glitter.
This little winged one came down from her flight up
Hovered in front of the tallest loneliest spire of the
fortress
And gave it the slightest tap with her foot,
A kick of a tap, pushing the lone holdout of the heights
Just ever so slightly
Over.
And then, a domino fall of cardboard cutout structures
ran through the whole complex
Each gate and torture chamber and dark doom room
falling over faster than the last
With simple thuds and mushrooms of dust
Which settled quickly
Leaving only a stark spacious horizon
As the little creature dove into my heart,
which had stopped gushing with blood
And was sucking all that blood back in,
taking any lost entrails with it
Until it had healed up
leaving only a tiny glitter of a scar right in my perfect center.
Facing the shocked blue-eyed boy
Who had been prepared to battle the fortress
in defense of his view of the insignificance of this speck
of human being
Offensive to his sense of what he deserved to be near,
This iota of my being burst out of its mold
with the clarity of a star among many
in the mountain night sky,
floating solid,
Surrounded by the expansive cloak of
profound serene mysterious dark space
Connecting each significant speck, in numbers beyond
counting, to one another.
I felt nothing but calm, and told him, ‘Just go’
But then a deep dark tickling from within my most hidden
corners
Burst up through my lungs
with a beloved joy leaping up to surf the air of my breath
And I joined my voice to say, “Thank you,
Thank you for shooting me down and bringing up what rushed
in
So I could be left here raw and alive in the center
Standing on the ground, surrounded by the beautiful spacious
horizon.”
That radiant line of earth meets sky
began to glow as it always does to start each day
began to glow as it always does to start each day
And the blue-eyed boy backed slowly into what was left of
the dark night
Hand on his holster, throat choked into quiet by a truth he
wasn’t ready to say,
And disappeared into the darkness, only to be found again,
or to find again
Or wherever his feet did take him.
The first ray of warmth soared into my feet
And lovingly moved up my back
And I stood there and soaked in the electron teeming life
Of the vast space around and within me.
