This constricted voice
is not entirely my own
– I have the small squeak of the divine
as she moves through this mid-life thaw.
I have the passionate tears of the dancer
who is carried through her shaking
by present and distant companions.
I am the Tlingit “Hoo-haa!”
in a firelit circle of bruised and compassionate faces.
I am the loving smile of Tia Jane,
leading children in prayer in a foreign language,
after soaking and wrapping their abscessed feet.
I am the voice on the radio,
and from the pulpit
and the front of the room.
I have swallowed my words
in my bedroom
and while cleaning the bedrooms of others.
I have stammered with loving intention,
and gathered up fragmented minds
to build brief, coherent visions.
I am she who helped navigate a room full of turbulence,
and she who sat alone in the dark, hoping to breathe again.
I am the body and the heart
that blended with her husband’s strong and broken soul
to birth and nurture two new lives
now wriggling on their incandescent journeys.
I am the radiant witch
who has burned her princess costume,
and thrown away the cackles and the warts
to stand revealed in her true power.
I am full and utterly empty.
I am she who is unforgettable and often invisible by choice.
No small life,
this collection of in-breaths and poems,
of washing dishes and invoking the Elders as we meet in new circles,
this beading together of cultures and geographies and loves.
I am a prism through which God shines his mottled light,
and a dust mote spinning briefly in a sunlit shaft,
one particle among millions that are falling to ground.