There was wine in a small round mason jar,
\ndark burgundy like old blood and older memories and the lipstick I save
\nfor the deepest nights and fullest moons. <\/p>\n
The name on the bottom of that tube of lipstick tube says Shame.
\nI just call it Honest. <\/p>\n
There were hours of tears that marked my face.
\nI call those honest too.
\nI\u2019ve lied before, no doubt.
\nBut never with tears.
\n if I told you that was true, would you believe me?<\/p>\n
And there was the dancing with ghosts,
\ncalling them in on purpose and asking them to stay.
\nThere was the telling of the story that is a reality that is a memory that is a mythology that is eternal inside of me.
\nThe getting lost in the letters on torn pages and napkins from coffee shops, almost illegible words scrawled in black ink.
\nThey are known just the same,
\nknown the way only bones can know<\/p>\n
There was the yearning – deep and sudden – for the specific pain of ink against those bones,
\nthe bones that know all the stories.
\nThe bones of my spine, this time, marking skin with poetry the way I envisioned so many years ago.
\nHe told me once, while he settled my own handwriting along my lower left rib and I breathed deep into the pain of that moment –
\nthat moment that was all loss and all grace and the knowing that everything had been changed –
\nhe told me then that the pain was weakness leaving my body.<\/p>\n
I wonder now, is there is a word for strength leaving your body? Or love?
\nWhat of its arrival?
\nOr is it only pain that the body names, and then only in it\u2019s leaving?
\nit is true, I know, that there are some things for which there are no words.
\nOnly the spaces between the words we know to say all that must be said
\nAnd I think about how some calls come deep, for years and years before I finally answer.
\nI wonder why this is so. And I wonder what this tells you about me. <\/p>\n
There was the way the heat cloaked my body outside,
\neven at almost midnight.
\nAnd smoke curled upward on the patio and filled my lungs and settled something down deep inside.
\nI exhaled then.
\nSometimes I forget to do that.
\nSome nights the darkness rolls on forever.
\nSometimes what we need is only found inside of something burning. <\/p>\n
Like the way I collected the candles from every room to fill the darkness.
\nAnd the way the letters all smell like a cigar box that says I love you in a language I\u2019ve never learned to speak.
\nThe way they smell like wood and smoke and foreign shores and the traveling forward and backward all at once.
\nThere was the black silk ribbon that was once tied around those letters
\nand the way it burned after I tossed it to the side
\nand it landed, unnoticed, on the flame of a dark red candle that sits atop a rusted gear that sits atop a rock that still holds the salt of my Atlantic home.
\nThe curls of smoke, the way they rose from that silk,
\nthe way the pieces of the ribbon fell away where it had burned, silken ashes against white skin.
\nI caught the fire and put it out before it became danger.
\nInstead it was just another honest kind of beautiful. <\/p>\n
There was the way I got up suddenly, because suddenly it mattered.
\nit mattered that I walked to my room and got undressed and raised my arms high and watched my own body in the full length mirror.
\nWatched the black dress that feels like a second skin
\nas it flowed downwards, falling soft against the top of my thighs.
\nAnd the way I piled my hair on my head and tied it in a knot and stretched my neck long and sprayed on a scent that melds jasmine and rose and amber and the slightest hint of peach.
\nI always want something sweet to counter the deep earth of me.
\ni always need something deep to counter the sweet of me.
\nAnd it mattered that I cleaned and repainted my tear-stained face.
\nStrong black liner and high arched brows and that honest lipstick I told you about earlier –
\ndark burgundy like the wine and the blood and the nights that feel especially true.<\/p>\n
And so then I poured another glass of wine.
\nAnd painted my nails.
\nTo match my honest lips
\nTo match the candle
\nTo match the fire
\nthat burned the silk
\nthat held the letters
\nthat spoke of the story
\nthat called on the ghosts.
\nBecause it’s what is honest, right now.
\nThe wine and this night.
\nAnd all the rest.
\nBecause honest is sometimes the color of old blood and dried tears.
\nAnd ashes against skin. <\/p>\n
Because sometimes honest isn\u2019t soft and pretty.
\nBecause sometimes I\u2019m not soft and pretty.
\nI get tired of being soft and pretty.<\/p>\n
And because just then the music rose.
\nAnd Van Morrison, he rocked me into the mystic
\nAnd then, then it moved deeper
\nI moved deeper
\nMusic like hands
\non skin
\non purpose.
\nAnd I remembered.
\nSomething I had read
\nThat Rumi had said,
\n\u201cwhere I am folded, there I am a lie\u201d<\/p>\n
So tonight I unfold.
\nFeet tracing patterns
\non hardwood floor
\nBody long against the boards
\nLimbs reaching
\nSkin finding home in the dance
\nHungry for something unnamed and holy.
\nHips moving the only way my hips know how to move.<\/p>\n
Honest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There was wine in a small round mason jar, dark burgundy like old blood and older memories and the lipstick I save for the deepest nights and fullest moons. The name on the bottom of that tube of lipstick tube says Shame. I just call it Honest. There were hours … <\/p>\n