Last night
\nThe earth started shaking
\nWhere she lives
\nThough it was steady here
\nliterally
\nIf not metaphorically
\nOr steady enough
\nAt least
\nThat I didn\u2019t feel movement
\nIn the ground
\nBeneath my own feet
\nThought it must have moved
\nI think
\nAt least the smallest imperceptible amount.
\nBecause if the earth moves somewhere
\nMustn’t it also be moving everywhere?
\nHow can that not be true?<\/p>\n
And I thought about saying
\nIn that exact moment
\nYou know – I once fell into a love
\nWith a Cajun snake charmer
\nShe tied bones in her hair and smoke rose from her skirts
\nwhen she walked through a room, bewitching all who came near.
\nAnd that love, I tell you now
\nWell, it rocked the whole damn world
\nSo that everyone, the whole earth over
\nfelt the vibrations
\nThough they named
\nThem all sorts of
\nDifferent things,
\nDepending on their circumstances
\nAnd location
\nAnd who is to say if they were right or wrong
\nExcept me,
\nand I know that that I fell into a love
\nThat rocked the whole damn world<\/p>\n
Or maybe it\u2019s more true
\nTo say that that love fell into me.<\/p>\n
Not fell in the way that buildings crumble in
\nThe epicenter of the quake
\nBut fell
\nIn some other way
\nSome more etheric and mysterious way
\nAnd I didn\u2019t say that
\nNot then
\nBut I thought then about how
\nThere are so many damn ways
\nTo fall
\nAnd so many different ways
\nTo tell a particular story<\/p>\n
It\u2019s just that some of those ways
\nAre more true<\/p>\n
And more true doesn’t mean
\nNot necessarily
\nMore factual.
\nNo, stories aren’t all
\nSimple and clean like that.
\nCan\u2019t be measured
\nBy the same standards
\nOf veracity
\nAs science or mathematics<\/p>\n
In fact
\nSome of the truest stories
\nI\u2019ve ever told
\nI haven\u2019t even lived
\nNot yet
\nOr if I have lived them
\nIt\u2019s been a thousand times and
\nOnly when brought together
\nDo they create
\nThe symphony of words that will
\nHit you in the gut
\nHard enough
\nThat you’ll name them holy<\/p>\n
Just like a story about
\nThe day my heart
\nBroke
\nIs not just a story of that one day
\nBut really a story of all the days
\nAnd all the hearts
\nAnd all the breaking
\nThat there ever has been.
\nAnd in order to write of my particular break
\nI conjured a spell
\nand the words gathered force
\nAnd called in all the stories
\nLiving in the air around me
\nAnd in the corners of my heart
\nAnd tucked under the roots
\nOf a willow tree
\nHalfway around the globe.
\nThat\u2019s where the richness is, you see
\nIt is the collective
\nIn this case
\nThat makes the singular more true.<\/p>\n
Did you know that once I traveled
\nThe entire world?
\nI wore a faded yellow sundress
\nWith soft red roses
\nAnd a slightly torn hem.
\nIn those days I woke up every morning
\nAnd washed my face
\nWith dewdrops
\nAnd tucked flowers in my hair
\nI sang on street corners
\nAnd was hailed for the otherworldly
\nBeauty of my voice
\nOne night I danced the tango with a sorceress
\nUnder the light of a blood red hunters moon in a town so ancient it didn’t have a name.
\nShe bewitched me and stole my voice and whispered in my ear that in exchange she would gift me an infinite stream of words but that I would only be able to write
\nIf I promised to never abandon my own heart
\nIt wasn’t black magic, she said, just the honest kind.
\nAnd that people often got the two confused but that
\nI could always tell the difference
\nIf I listened with my bones
\nAfter that I could no longer sing
\nSo I took handsome lovers in exchange
\nFor a steady supply of ink
\nWith which to write the truth<\/p>\n
One day I left my sandals behind
\nOn the hot cobblestones
\nOf a village square
\nBecause my feet right then,
\nThey needed to feel the ground
\nWith nothing in the way
\nI left those sandals in a country the language was not mine
\nwhere I spoke to nobody and only smiled
\nAnd yet there I told more true stories than i\u2019ve ever told you.<\/p>\n
For a short while
\nBack in those days
\nI joined a traveling circus
\nCan you imagine?
\nI became
\nIn just a short time
\nAn expert at the flying trapeze
\nAnd every night
\nAfter the show
\nI slept next to the lion tamer.
\nNo, it wasn\u2019t like that
\nNot like you\u2019d think.
\nI had enough ink by then
\nTo last a lifetime
\nBut he yearned for home
\nHe hadn\u2019t slept
\nnot a wink
\nfor three long years
\nBecause he missed the sound
\nOf a mother’s heartbeat.<\/p>\n
I only left because I woke up one day
\nAnd I had forgotten why i was there
\nWhich is, I believe
\nThe best reason for leaving
\nSo I stole off that night during the tightrope routine
\nand ran straight
\nFor the ocean
\nIn my bare feet.
\nAnd I stripped off my sundress
\nWith its faded red roses and slightly torn hem
\nAnd I left it there on the rocks in case
\nSome mermaid thought to try her luck on land
\nand I walked into the water naked and
\nSwam all the way home<\/p>\n
And who are you to say if that was true
\nOr false
\nOr metaphor
\nOr prophesy
\nAny more than you could
\nTell my friend
\nThe truths
\nHer body knew last night
\nWhen it stood outside
\nIn the rain while
\nThe earth shook
\nBeneath her feet<\/p>\n
Or to say that the stories
\nFrom the epicenter are
\nMore true or important
\nThan the ones from the margins
\nThat the buildings that crumble
\nCry harder than the ones
\nThat just crack<\/p>\n
But either way, did you know
\nThat I once fell into a love that rocked the whole damn world
\nOr maybe, as I said before
\nIt would be more accurate to say
\nThat the whole damn world fell into me
\nbecause I loved
\nAnd if you believe in the truth of that, and I swear
\nThat it is so.
\nThen let me tell you my stories
\nAnd know in your bones
\nthat I write
\nThe truth<\/p>\n
No. I have not flown through the air on a flying trapeze
\nOr experienced the earth dancing beneath my feet.
\nBut the world is wide open before me
\nAnd I might,
\nI might.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last night The earth started shaking Where she lives Though it was steady here literally If not metaphorically Or steady enough At least That I didn\u2019t feel movement In the ground Beneath my own feet Thought it must have moved I think At least the smallest imperceptible amount. Because if … <\/p>\n