Light and Weight

The Silver Leaf was a lodge that may or

May not still exist, the place nearly all of my life’s imagery was

Born, the glass-like rivers and lavender panoramas that still feature

Every time I speak or paint or write. They have survived the years.

 

Something else frozen there is a someone,

A tiny blonde thing little more than a fairy, too slender, just like a

Doll with posable joints, take her with you anywhere, she’ll follow.

Eleven, springy, and cool to touch like the far side of an open curtain.

 

I was passive and often floating on the

Perimeter, still thirteen and sulking, always, that I now had to

Figure myself out. She was a brightness and a warmness and I

Felt sort of safe just by hanging on to her because she was Light.

 

But then the woman in me ruined everything,

Just like my hips and chest that were growing I was weighing myself

Down. I was weight, and with my pulling on her, her brightness began

To flicker. A feeling inside me grew, a magnetism that pulled too hard

 

And too fast for my doll-like treasure, and I

Saw it smothering her, and maybe my family or hers saw it too,

The want I wasn’t meant to have. I started biting my nails raw

When they took us apart from each other, for years, until the woman

 

Inside me became all of me, and my hard,

Simple want burned and blossomed into the desire that is the real threat.

Two women. We metamorphosed. I was coasting, grounded by the memory

Of you, and now I am facing your warm, supple reality, not a dream,

 

But a body. Gems for eyes, flesh on solid bone.

You resurface, sliding wetly from past into present where you lose your

Shimmer and are reborn into time. The gravitation hungers and begins again.

White hot and iridescent, I cast my luminosity on you.

 

I am light. You are weight.