I am alone, wandering through music and literature. There is magic in the sound of this home. I dance for the dead and for the squirrels. I dance to stretch my muscles and to be beautiful, part of the everything that is so perfectly itself here.
I long to be beautiful. My breasts and skin, the curls in my hair, the lovely wrinkles, they are nothing for eternity. The dance is somehow part of it though. The doing nothing also fits in. Sadness, longing, memories, they are all comfortable here.
I wish for the sex lost to me through this life of woman-ness. Years of it still out there, floundering, vying for attention, soaked in confusion. If I could pull it back, reel it from the water, unbait the hook and put it in my pocket, I would. A thousand circling and I have been seducing, because I thought I had to.
The Ocean tried to kill me once. But I am here, alone with my body and nobody to see it - awkward, sexy. The dance is sprinkled with mistakes and moments, so perfect, they can only exist when unseen. Spiders and chickadees, the singing frogs and invisible ancestors, they applaud with their presence. All movement is welcome. I long for beauty and here, alone, I feel it, the everything I am without having to be.
I felt it. Even before the breasts and fine hairs growing between my legs, I felt the hunger. I felt the eyes on me, waiting (or not) for a taste. As if I could be tasted, as if one taste could be tried and the whole known.
This music is so good, the only thing to do is fall in love. I didn’t know it of course. I was afraid of being consumed and so I sat safely, cutting off bits of flesh to lure the hungry. Sex became my great defense. I had control? I was empowered? I became exactly what they wanted. It was easy, the formula obvious, advertised in language, taught at school, woven through cartoons, decorating the toolshed. It was there for everyone to see and so I put it on. It didn’t make the hunger go away, the hunger that was so terrifying. At least I didn’t have to run. That is what I thought.
I didn’t run. I disappeared. Under the veil of performance I turned my back on love. In that Ocean, I couldn’t go deep. I couldn’t swim with the weight of my disguise.
These days, I keep the company of ghosts and quartets. I am alone. It suits me. It’s safe here. Safe enough to undress. To abandon hook and sinker, tend my wounds. Grow back the pieces sacrificed to a sovereignty with little space for innocence. Shed the armor grown into my skin.
And (hushed) I secretly wish for a spy. Some prince to see me. He hides behind the oak tree. This hero who knows me from afar as I get to know myself. There will be no explaining. I see him! There, looking back at me, startled at having been discovered. He watches and, like me, is upside down, hanging from a metal hoop fastened to the moon. I recognize his likeness. I relate to the lines in his brow. When I touch mine, he copies the gesture, delicate in his movement. He descends the aerial instrument, approaches the evening window. We place hands on the glass and fall in Love, briefly. We need nothing from each other so eventually, I pull the shade. I climb the apparatus, lean back into music and, beautiful, return to the dance.
