For a while we were nothing
eyes that touched but didn’t speak
Together in the corporeal sense
we kept a bolt of politeness folded between us
recognizing only as much
as the negative space our bodies make
in the background landscape of disparate worlds
Now the veil is dropped
I look at you and our eyes
can hold hours of conversation
You see me even in absence
recognizing the shape of the spirit
and your world had become the foreground of mine.
Is there a fire burning somewhere near?
The smell of Halloween floats on the air,
Not heavy-hanging wood-fire smoke, but bright
And fast like sparklers fizzing gunpowder:
A crackling blaze that bristles on the wind.
The waft of tea lights flickering against
The charred black ceiling of their pumpkin heads
Is dark and full as earth’s entombing kiss.
The moon alight with jack-o-lantern glow,
The stars stark white just like a host of ghosts
Where clear sky holds the gentle tang of rot,
The fallen apple’s ferment, cider sour,
Sharp spice of leaves that tumble all around,
and must of fresh-turned dirt and sweet wet grass.
The name of all these memories escapes
My heart, to hover just before my eyes
A cloud dissolving as it joins the sky
And all those burning, dying, aching smells,
A gasp of soul that leaps to join the march
Of footfalls that we cannot hear and names
Forgotten to the depths of time. Will night
Forever feel this way on Halloween?
The prick of fear and hitch of breath,
To know one foot in winter and in death,
But cling to energy’s ascending buzz
That raises all the hairs on craning necks.
We cast a look behind us, as compelled,
By feeling something must be there and yet
Are only met with whispers of a smell
of fire burning somewhere near, and else,
Unnameable and hidden in plain sight.
From depths of earth up to the firmament,
The tingle of familiar, unseen,
This jolt of sensory, pursuing me,
As if October’s dying breath possessed
Me, fast decaying, yet, commanding me to live.
Someone is awake in the second floor apartment. Blue light glows softly from the window—the blinds drawn—and on the TV, a man’s voice drones an incoherent hum of speech. My feet tap the sidewalk like an interruption.
It is an illusion to think I am the only one yawning at the neon-lit street. If anything, I am intruding upon the hour of bus drivers and gas station attendants. Maybe the people in these cars will be dropped off at the departure gate with heavy bags and a tight hug from a good friend. Maybe they’re rushing to the hospital, awakened out of peaceful routine by an urgent reminder of overlooked mortality. Maybe this driver, alone in their car, is just now beginning a journey that will change their life.
It’s the hour of the Eglinton West construction worker and the 24 hour café waitress. I can see it now: her clean shirt and tired eyes. The functional cut of their grey-speckled garb. She casts them a practiced smile, her only table of customers. Perhaps one of them prefers tea to coffee. His calloused fingers dunk the tag on its fragile string with surprising gentleness. When they stack their dishes, the silverware clatters melodiously above the tinny cafe radio.
Maybe the man with his medical mask and his work bag, passing me, no eye contact, making his way south, savours the chill of the pre-dawn summer morning just as I do. He rolls up his shirt sleeves and feels the caress of air slide goosebumps along his arm.
Too soon the smoggy heat will smother the streets more thoroughly than traffic. And that one bright star, winking above the wisps of purple cloud like a friend with a secret to tell, will be lost in the blaze of dawn.
The sideways stretch of willow’s rise
towards the light, over the lake
with roots entrenched in water’s breath
reminds me of far younger limbs.
We drank its life with thirsty eyes
and tossed our lines imperious
from lung to lung and tongue to tongue
as climbing, thought to never fall.
Perhaps you know the tree I mean,
whose branches held us year through year:
those moments lost as drops of rain
whose ripples fade as they become
rejoined with earth’s cyclical corps.
The trunk is smooth and welcoming,
inviting us once more to feel
soft brushing fingers splayed in climb
and muscles tightly gripped in legs;
where one foot leans in old-time’s-sake,
one hand reaches to future’s hold.
Were you as vine to me, or leaf?
Of wind-stirred touch, or steady hand?
Some times I think we have been all
the aspects of the willow tree,
my wistful sorrow and strength both
engrained in heart and memory
these limbs of childhood that sway
in challenge and in loyalty.
Blue light dipping in foot rhythms;
ice melting in cocktails
turned slippery in condensation
and summer’s oil-like, lithesome limbs.
Open this throat like a yawning tunnel
and slug the sound of saxophone
flooding light
that gaping darkness
in the fire of jazz and whiskey
where releasing the weight of aching minds
in inky heads with ears sloshing full,
we curve exposed and arching
to collapse the demure decorum of posture and silence.
How else could we know this poetry on the ceiling,
mark the faces emotive on heavily swishing heads
bobbing and swaying like boats
on an atmospheric sea
that spans the coasts of seat and stage,
where stolen winds of conversation swept us to shore together
on an island of familiar sands and rhythmic tides;
a common ground below swooping seagull glares,
who circle back to cast their echoed caws of offence.
But loftily trapped above the warmth of feet in sand
how could they know that all this music is not for silent listening?
It is proximity.
To hear the grit of sand between your grinding teeth
or to part expression’s maw
and suffocate silence with drunken grains of warmth,
compacting and settled in every unknown space – which is closer?
It’s the water carrying the boats
and in the wind it’s fire on a darkened cold
it limbers and pumps each human inch to action;
it touches everything.
It is flood,
irresistible synchronicity of movement:
life and time are coiled here
to spring into a common pace with strangers and their leap is like
a breath lost at the lurch of sensory plunge:
spots of colour over vision locking eyes with the sun,
ribs throbbing in the slow after sprinting to catch up,
breaking the surface of the deep,
that gasp for air,
here now our footfalls dip
as one blue rhythm,
joint with breath in-taken.
In unison,
shouting out,
unending melody,
identity:
the riff just keeps on going.
We move in step.
The smell of hot sunlight warming the old wooden floorboards carried itself around the circle of women, of which I was one. Sitting in half lotus on my mat, I struggled to align my breath with the flow of those breathing around me. I had never meditated before. To me, yoga was a strength-building exercise that played well into my natural physical flexibility. It had never been this challenging for me, and this was only breathing. I was at a kundalini yoga retreat for International Women’s Day, and the irony of finding it difficult to simply be present was not lost on me. What woman in this world has the privilege to allow herself to be wholly as she is, flaws, strengths, and all, just breathing? We are usually too busy working to earn respect, and fighting to keep what we’ve earned.
After our silent meditation, the women of the circle were invited to share how we felt. I listened with interest as women expressed empowerment and strength they were unused to knowing. The resounding sentiment was that here in this circle, they felt graced with a rare sense of being entirely “enough”. They felt sufficient and accepted for who they were. It was amazing to hear, but I felt oddly separate. I couldn’t relate. The notion of being accepted for who you fully are, yes, that resonated with me as a too-rare occurrence. But among all my insecurities, the feeling of insufficiency seldom crops up. Where was the disconnect between myself and these women, when we shared a feeling of acceptance?
The week that followed the retreat was standard fare. I worked at the bakery and came home covered in various forms of dough and chocolate. I walked my dog. I ate dinner with my husband while watching Sex and the City: those precious stolen moments where it’s perfectly acceptable to let your mind stop racing. And yet, even in those moments, that same question would come back to me.
I think I’ve answered it now. The key is in that word “fully”. It’s true that in the safe space of the meditation circle, I felt fully accepted for who I was. The difference between many of those women and myself is what alterations we make to our full selves day-to-day in our hopes of being accepted. I think the women who finally felt sufficient in the circle fight daily to prove their worth, both to those around them and to themselves. There’s this constant pressure to measure up. I, on the other hand, came to realize that I struggle to keep myself reigned in. To be accepted, for me, has often meant needing to hold a large part of myself back. I’m not afraid that I’ll never measure up, but I have lived in the fear that if I were to allow myself to be fully who I am, I would be too much for others to handle. My opinions come off too strong. My feelings are too intense. My movements take up too much space. I am too hungry. It’s not that I’m not enough; I am too much.
Why the dichotomy? Women came to this retreat from all walks of life, but it seems to me like we were all letting go of the same fear. All any of us needed was a safe space where we were allowed to be ourselves, whatever that meant to each of us. We were given permission to take up as much space as we wanted: whatever was needed to entirely lay out our weaknesses and our strengths together. We aired them out like clean laundry drying in the sun. Why did we need permission to do that?
I shared this revelation with a friend of mine, one of the smartest women I know. I told her that I wanted to write about this dichotomy, this sharp line between feeling not enough or too much. She said, “Well, what do you want to do about it?” That’s really the question I should have been asking myself all along. What do I want to do about it? I want to change it. And I believe that I can.
Violet morning
like youthful eyes in the face
of an aging year
A window clutching lines of rain
the bramble of dew glistened thorns
waves of yellow topped stalks
the farmhouse looking sturdy
with sloping roof and distant white walls
a wisp of mist like prelude to Halloween
the mountains cold morning blue,
all folded one after the other
like stacks of clean laundry
straightened by some maternal hand
and behind them all,
the sky.
The meeting of our eyes was the weight of letters packaged and tied
flat in my palm, as I received them,
and every greeting was untying the strings that bound them.
You laughed and it was the sound of my finger hooked under the envelope’s mouth
and tearing—the smooth slip of opening—
and unfolding.
I agreed with the dreams you couldn’t keep off your tongue
and steadily we smoothed out
the pages of our separate hearts
and read them.
old embers flit along the line of clouds,
like fingers strum horizon’s humming haze,
a distant note reverberates, on fire
and striking rain-soaked sky like lit up gasoline.
Grey echoes buzz, the mountains shake
are dancing through the flame
are casting shadows creaking like a closing door:
the hinges on a rusty autumn day
thrown into darkness thick as smoke
the last notes ringing in the night.
Mackenzie Lee 