Cry of the Stars

Nobody goes head-first
down a cliff.
For you perhaps your knees
started it all, suddenly knocking together
and out and off the edge
before you even understood,
and your shins (kicking at
the couch-back as you leaned over,
happy) abandoned ship
soon after,
and thighs and ribs and shoulders
left you just as quickly.
For me I think my arm fell first,
a limb deciding permanently
it belonged around
another waist, and the rest
is easy to guess.
In any case, at some point
the heart capers far below, while
the head sits alone on top, calling,
wait, wait,
where have you gone
without me?

To be a tree
planted once,
not thrice, not rooted
unsteady across
two oceans;
to be a dandelion
unscattered,
a trail of crumbs
leading only one way?

To learn that
a house is home and
believe it,
or else

I. Sunrise

Honey gold licked through the back van
windows, stuck warm to our clothes
and ran down our sleep-muddled hair,
took the jitters running indigo and itchy
through our veins and turned them
into light. Soft glowing amber
crowned every head with a horizon
of its own.

Maybe it was a blessing,
maybe the emblem of beginnings, rising
neatly at the inception of our journey
as if a marvelous coincidence designed
to soothe our fears and awaken our souls
with promised joy.
Maybe it was just beautiful.

The road flowed along like a golden river
and the tires rumbled like an old song,
and the sky brightened like an unbidden smile
as we drove on and on.


II. Sunset

There's a map on the screens
where you could watch the night move
across the ocean, you could
watch the night
move.

Somewhere above the sea
we crossed the line that separates the
sun from darkness, we crossed
that elusive
line:

You did not know it yet, but
you were a casual time traveler with
sleep truncated, a casual sleeper
traveling through
time.


III. Sunrise

it was different, five thousand feet
in the air. like the dawn broke on that
flat edge and bled all over it,
deep crimsons and phosphorescent
orange almost too close up
and brightly neon to bear.

"my first african sunrise,"
said the man on my right.
mine too,
though the craters and hills beneath
were not african land nor african sea,
but dense gray cloud -
soaking in the day's birthing blood
till it was all innocent white,
and the sky faint blue again.
belonging to no country but the heavens.

lucky me, on the left side of the plane
as we flew south along the night's borders.
across the aisles they leaned over,
craned and cracked their necks
to taste a little of the new morning.
i drank it all up, mouth wide open
and throat aching.


IV. Sunset

Breathe, finally.
The wind can touch your face
at last, its fingers smelling of smoke
and diesel and somehow pride,
or freedom.

Do not close your eyes.
The evening comes with a welcome
of rain, cool and light as the day
prepares to sleep,
but you - you are not dreaming.
The bus is crowded and your
cramped legs are numb,
but the windows are wide open, so
look out at the dimming sky and
breathe.

You have come so far, so long.
New terrain rattles loud in your sternum,
this old land's way of settling into
your heart, and though
the road seems endless, you know
that rest is near.

You have come so long, so far,
a traveler now with newborn night
sinking into your blood,
as we - the friends, the blessed,
the brothers -
drive on and on.

Shall accusing eyes
burn your skin away, or
cutting words bleed you dry?
Shall angry hands beat and bruise
until your bones have forgotten
how to heal?

Perhaps, perhaps, and we -
together we would bear it all.

In the end
it is the untying of our wrists,
the image of a back
that will break us both:
ankles in slow motion and
shoulders shrinking steadily,

and a beloved face fixed
on the far side
of a neck that will not turn.

The human spent her childhood
in the early days of the moon,
holding hands and laughing through
the trees, spinning like young stars

on the ground until the moon awoke—
rising to take her place in the sky,
she slipped her growing hands from
the human girl's with faint regret.

So the human wandered into dawn
and met bold, bright, handsome Sol,
bursting with youth and impossibly
charming. They danced and played

for hours, like children just finding
their feet, and for a long while
she neglected twilight, though now
and again she stood and looked

at Luna, all grown up and lovely
and so far away. When Sol found
it was his time to leap into the sky,
the human knew to let him go,

but she tilted her head back and
talked; she would not lose a friend
again. Sol told the girl of all he saw,
the forests, rivers, endless oceans—

and one day he sighed, saying
I have found perfection. Lovely,
lovely Luna. How I wish . . .
But the human heard no more

for the sorrow drowning her ears.
That night she wrapped herself in
Luna's silent company, comforted

This bed of flowers could
very well be my heart,
scattered with seedlings just
pushing their young green heads
into sunlight.

If only—I whisper, burying fingers
in the cool, dark soil—if only
the crocuses and lilies took
deep root in their welcome,
while the crabgrass knew to wither,

but in a spirit of timidity or
perhaps mischief, the seedlings
have learned for now to masquerade
in unity.

There are so many mysteries
in this fertile earth staining my knees:

Which must I tear out,
before they settle in and drain
my love's richness dry?

Where do I direct the rain,
to water those gentle flowers
still waiting to bloom?

Whose voice do I hear
softly over my shoulder when I am quiet,
whose trowel in my hands,
whose gloves working side by side
with mine?

The sorrow you leave behind
is that of a body missing its arm.
It is the disbelief of sudden absence,
the clumsiness of a crippling,
and the tormented yearning for lost wholeness.

If you are to be
at all, you must be entirely
separate from me.

Although
yours are the adventures, the
talents, the spheres of importance

and bold-cut destiny that I—
dwelling in modern insignificance and
this world's gauze-veiled

sense of purpose—can, literally,
only dream of; I will not mold
your consciousness too familiarly,

as if your existence were
merely an escape from mine. No,
you must be your own.

I'll make your shoulders about
as wide as my set, so I can learn
to craft the rest of you:

royal robes and heavier burdens
must lay across your neck,
such as I've not known,

but I'll slip more easily
into your skin, if our shoulders
are the same. Still,

I hope you'll be a mystery
to me,
a person complete in yourself,

a real girl for other girls to meet—
and after that, perhaps,
a friend.

Let me introduce you to a girl who is far away from home:
This is En-Yin-and-Davina,
whose name sounds like a song on the tongues of this culture.
Here she breathes in dust beneath a low red sun,
where city life has drained the color from the earth and sky
and splattered it on vivid billboards high above her head,
and splashed the stolen brightness into wrappings of strange food
in the supermarket and on the street.

She wakes in darkness to the sound of her own loud thinking.
Each day, it warps more into a different voice. New, but slow and accented,
mixing the words of two languages in patterns acceptable to neither.
She wonders which she wants to be.

--

They call me the one who looks like them.
They know I am not. It is only my face, my eyes, and my hair
that give them pause as I open my mouth.

Something insists that this shell of mine means I should belong with them.
Something else maintains that my people have always looked different.

(Of course, there is one small problem,
always this one problem:                                                   
I may call you my people,
but will you call me yours?)

--

Like the six-floor rhythm of this city's buildings,
Tuesday flowed quickly into Friday, but Saturday was an adventure
with the children, planting trees in the countryside.

We set those fragile saplings in the dusty ground and left our wishes there
for the tiny branches to bear when they grow strong and sturdy.
We watched those paper hearts, tied with yellow ribbons, flutter in the wind:
Let my child - I read with new eyes - grow strong and sturdy with this tree.

In that comforting moment I could have been anyone,
and anyone could have been me. Not that we had become the same,
but that I had burrowed through the layers of language and society
and found, strong and thick, a root of humanity to hold onto.
We all learned somewhere to love.

--

Later, having discovered
an unexpected sister,
everything became
clear.

Sometimes, forgetting, I lose
the sense of my own soul, as if identity lay
in birth or upbringing. Those, I saw, would take hold of me
and tear me apart from opposite ends.
But I am whole.

--
Let me introduce you to a girl who is far away from home.
Let me show you myself, caught now between two cultures but
a visitor in every nation here, an ambassador sent for life.

My people are a family scattered wide and far, close and near,
tied together with strings of blood.

We are calling out in every language:
come, sons, come, daughters,

let us go, rejoicing,
on the long journey
to our golden city.

You could be the opening chapter
of a book: the kind that quickly settles
behind my eyes, alive and somehow
just right.
A beginning that promises a traveler's
journey whose steps will wander
through the whole of my ribcage yet
never venture too far;
a momentum of happiness in uncovering
the well-formed art that sits best
in my hands, piece by piece,
page by page,
moment by moment.
You could be the outline
of a classic, a favorite in the making,
the slow and joyful discovery
of treasure.
Your hand could be the masterpiece
that, carved true, fits best
in mine.

If anyone asks where I've been,
I'll tell them I'm a swamp dweller
learning to live in a palace;
that I was floundering nose-deep
and breathing sludge when he pulled me out;
that the touch of clean air
still chafes at my waterlogged skin but
I'm getting better at standing
on solid ground with my own two feet.

I'll mention that there are times
I feel the old swampweed crawling
at my throat, and though it promises
comforts of what I once called home,
it can't embrace me anymore.
On the days I let it spread and
tangle with the gold he put around
my neck, I am choking by nightfall,
crying for him until he comes to
tear the dripping vines away
and show me that they were broken
all along, ghosts who only
grew because I called them to.

If anyone asks what I've done,
I'll tell them I once killed the man
who rescued me and left me his
inheritance. I watched him
drown where I had stood, watched
the swampweed crawl into his
mouth and fill his lungs
while he looked straight at me
and forgave and
forgave.

He gave me his clothes, his
name, his father, his house—
then, like morning incarnate,
he climbed out of the swamp
and gave me himself,
absolutely alive and
glowing with more love
than I ever deserved to behold,

so if anyone asks who I am,
I'll tell them, simply,
I am his.

Today, amidst drifting dust
and soft massed cobwebs,
I held pieces of a woman's life
in my hands. Her fragmented
history fossilized, small moments
emblazoned in faded sepia
and the script of old books.
I could not lay the pieces out
to read the whole story, but
it was enough to know
the worn, cleaned boxes I packed
them in would hold it all
a while longer,
for those who bear the traces of
that woman in their names and
in their faces, and carry all 
the tales of her
in heart and memory.

Well, all the other kids have got
their pencils out. They've marked the spots
where iron crowbars, hammer swings,
spikes, and other pointy things
might best bring down this monolith.
Not me. No, I am numbered with
those who have lost their precious tools--
the clueless ones, the fools.

This bleak expanse wears little, just
the remnants of our feeble thrusts:
a crimson drip, a rusty scar
from shoulders torn and raw. We are
the prisoners of endless youth,
who rest our heads on kneecaps, soothe
our bloody hands with bitter tears,
and count the fading years.

Oh, I would sit and sleep away
my days. I'd catch the dreams that stray
from me like threaded mist between
my fingers, bind them till they're clean
as mountain springs and buttercups,
spin them gold and drink them up
till they are cold and real as rain,
and never rise again . . .

Yet something murmurs discontent,
a fervent voice that takes offense
at idle limbs and slumbering mind.
It cries: awake, oh sleeper! Find
your sight once more and look beyond
your dreams, see how the ancient bonds
have fallen from your wrists. You're free,
it calls, reminding me

that there is work still incomplete--
so pull me back onto my feet
and put your chisel in my hand.
A fool I am, but I will stand
and hammer at this wall with you,
if you will show me what to do.
If you, who brought down Jericho,
would teach me where to place each blow,

I know that I could tear it down.
Then at the broadness of new ground
perhaps I'll hesitate in fear,
but let me not forget you're near
and that I'll never walk alone
until I reach our glorious home--
so let my sleeping spirit wake,
and guide my hands till this wall breaks.

i. (the ex)

your sister's boyfriend left
and she can't sleep anymore,
not with night always burning in her ear,
its palms frozen to her jaw and its
elbows splintering her chest,
made fragile from too many days spent
finding traces on the bookshelf, in the kitchen,
gaping with the emptiness of
being left behind,

and nothing i can do
could ease the aching of that
love ripped from her bones.


ii. (the parents)

forgive me,
both of you:
i know i've spit my share of poisoned words
that had no place inside a mother's mouth.

now yellow walls crack, all browning edges,
watching your father's beard turn grey,
his face wrapped with choking regret
and his callused hands, as he
waits for you to come back,
to say i'm sorry

my son, i am so sorry.


iii. (the remnants)

your sister's seven years thinner, and her
heart's been patched messily twice more
before you even think of turning around,

so some days
she braids my hair and i braid hers,
and i've tried and tried,
but i am weeping
for our broken fingers.

The vision of you, at first, appears
almost mythical: the unearthly guise
of perfection, the cold glare of near-divinity.
Your dress floating, as if out of the sunset
a young cloud blushed, and bowed to kiss
your feet, and shroud your towering frame.

It's no less startling as you draw near,
when dusk is drawn in shadows rising
around us. Something of you seems infinite
and inhuman, an entity of secrets
sojourning here awhile. Thus
in my mouth, your soul remains unnamed,

but morning comes, finally, to tear
the dazzling veil away. (Blinking, I realize
your eyes are level with my chin.)
Now in dawn's greying, at last I meet
your tired and gentle face--and there it is.
The quiet revelation of sameness.

is that
really a name?
it sounds like sauce:
    "I'll have the chicken in francesca,
    please."
   
(by that I mean
it sounds exactly as Italian
as it is, and I'm clueless
about the items on my menu anyway.
francesca salsiccia,
edoardo parmigiana,
eggplant antonio - ignorant
consumer that I am,
I'd be fooled.)

I don't know anyone
named Francesca. that's
probably why it sounds like sauce
to me, because there is no
solidity to its meaning
until I have a face,
a voice, and a mind
to call 'free one' and see
how well it fits,

so francesca means food
for now, endlessly silly
until a soul - palpable
and eternally interesting -
comes along to
give the name a body.