qarrtsiluni

i

my white shoes looked like a baby’s,
high topped leather, scuffed
they provided a sturdy anchor
for metal braces
burning along my thighs
their steel stays
prevented my knees from
bending and so

the houses of early memory
are filled with stairs about to be climbed
and encounters with gravity,
with slippery steps up to the front door,
wet mittens sticking to the wrought iron railings,
front doors opening onto stairwells,
interior rooms joining hallways
which are – inevitably – joined by stairs,

stairwells with unevenly worn steps,
wood steps up, cement steps down,
stairs with no rails at all,
circular stairs of triangular wedges
each too small for secure footing,

long stairs without a landing to rest on,
stairs to tumble down
with loudest banging,
the noise as terrifying
as the spinning view, as the fall
and the sudden stop.

ii

in my house green leaves grow
along the windows
and swirling in a teapot made by my hands
are tea leaves from around the world
that I earned by singing
and on the walls are flowers that always bloom
cast in brilliant paint
by my daughter
and photographs of my lover
dancing the wild white river waves

in my house music flows, and poetry, politics,
debate, silliness, laughter,
love of nature, waste
the lovely and the profane
in every room collecting
and colliding
dust, the dust
of our boots
of trails brought home
of books, skin, dog hair,
the detritus of life

each room of this
hundred year old house
collects ephemera –
knowing caresses
under the comforter,
dreams of spiders,
and stray eyelashes—
we shed our bodies and
dreams and memories
as we somersault
through our lives.

iii

I am a stranger
even among those I know well
a part reserved, a part apart,
looking for secure footing –
knocked loose
or loosely tethered
subject to extreme gravity
centrifugal force –
circling
looking for something lost
something remembered
something once left behind

sometimes in a song
in a forest
in a poem
while making love,
something deep within moves –
odd, riverine,
flowing and vast,
inhabitable –

a strange, unfamiliar
luminescence,
wholly recognizable as
home.

Written by MB Whitaker of Find Me a Bluebird.