I Will Live In Between

A response piece to Aditi Rao's Not Being A Man, I Bleed Like This

I will live in between --

counting seconds 

between 

heartbeats,

lives between

seconds.

  

I will live in between --

breathing my own air

in the moments before

the sun rises. 

 

I will wake with

thoughts all my own

and walk in footsteps

I choose: never backwards

and never following

the shadows on sidewalks.

 

Yesterday, a man in a peeling,

brown truck whistled out

his window at a girl.

 

The whistle of his ancestors 

echoes centuries ago, repeating a 

mating call of masculinity.

 

How many years are built

into the palms of hands?

Are we made of stars or the

thoughts of our ancestors,

built up over time until

they thread into our skin?

 

These hands have written

stories, have balled up in rage,

have stretched in the early morning.

These hands have felt and touched

and lived. 

But these hands have also

held babies their very own,

touched the foreheads of

their loved ones,

shaped clay pots, 

lived. 

These hands have

stories weaved 

into their fingerprints 

on fingertips.

Every now and then,

I realize I am collecting

myself from people and places.

I have lived a thousand years, 

a thousand deaths, but one life,

and still I live. 

 

I am freckled with these lives,

hands of the hungry and

the wealthy,

the loved and the lonely.

 

I think of the woman I was five centuries

ago, bent over clay, worried

that the rim is crooked, wondering

if the color is right. 

 

I think of the woman I was and

the woman I will be,

and these women,

us,

her,

me,

we know: 

it's immortality.

 

I wonder if she felt pressured

by her people, if she felt

preoccupied by thoughts of

leaving her life.

I wonder if she fell in love

with the stars.

 

I will live in between --

the woman I was

and the woman I will be.

 

I want to uphold her honor,

I want to make her feel proud.

 

Living every day, since the

stars had become cells,

I will begin as I always have --

again.

 

I remember only the wet earth,

waiting for footprints to

make me feel whole.

 

 

Reviews

[SleeplessVolcano]

Beautifully written.......it is often in the in between......in the twilight......in the gray......that we discover our true colors.... :)