glitter

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

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.