Bundled within a momentous wish

When I was four
I wanted a new perspective,
so I lay beneath a wagon hitch
to see what it looked like
as it hurtled toward my face.
But the event was blurry at best -
full of blood and screams and panic.
I don’t remember a lot
about the aftermath.

I never was in Kansas, Dorothy,
although life was real and dusty;
golden across its plains.
Wheat heads glinted, full of chaff -
and me sorting, ever sorting
through the precious grains.

Too many nights of strange arms
and strangers’ sighs -
met without hellos,
fled from with no goodbyes.
Daylight brought the drudgery
of dull obligatory rote,
trudging up and down the stairs;
and in between huddled in a corner,
fingering the trigger.

No surprise then
that I should be just where I am.
Step beyond step pointing the direction;
ever searching out a place
beyond the place
where I was.

A hand in my pocket feeling around;
nothing there to satisfy my curiosity -
itself an incessant buzz and occasional ricochet
off the mirror of my blankness.
I had become a cipher,
needing a code book to read
through my indifference.

It was then that I felt the edge of joy
stirring me gently.
I tried to push it away
and sink into my sobriety.
Not so was the soft response
of a burgeoning ecstacy.

I knew I had enveloped the task;
made it an integral part
of what I had nurtured in myself.
The demon of lassitude
and the angel of detachment
swung round in a riotous dance,
their razors wielded -
slicing through my callous of grief.
Layer upon layer fell away,
revealing the tenderest
of flesh.


© 2002 Melissa Songer