3.3 KiB
holding spell
we share a rich vocabulary; us.
we can speak of
broad skies and magnitudes,
the sound of a blown voice,
through a horn softly
on a hill far away,
of magnetite swathes
and sparks so sharp,
they can be felt by grazing a little finger.
we can speak of things that
when we don’t feel strong, we think about
and of things that
when we want to feel strong, we think about. \
little animals, small and quiet and shivering
caressed but
suspended
by the tips of whiskers only air.
when we speak, noses twitching
it can be of
separateness, discreteness
the spaces between circles
overlapped, but still holding
we can multiply interpretations,
and brace against their weight
or
we can scoop up abundance
and bathe lightly. \
throats, quivering, sound like cold or terror
but they too ask, whether the circles
are organisms micro-vibrating
with the energy it takes
to realise squelchy new forms
to absorb: experience grows the self grows autonomy
by care and love into the blood. \
our expanding throats
stickily coated with the outside,
wonder
whether us-as-earth, will shift magnetic poles again
as we did recently
780,000 years ago
well, not within my living memory but
maybe within ours. \
it’s comforting that a polar shift might mean no more
to glottises
than huffing in the wet brown mulch from the forest floor;
yelling in bluebells until we laugh
is anyway more accessible and soothing. \
to you, the piece of my bruised heart:
that bright lodged glint
is your intelligence
equal to all winds it bends against
think of it like a tinder mushroom -
cupped, it can keep you warm
and light many fires along the way \
when we loudly open ourselves without
insides
the world rushes in
unbidden even
but making calm salve
by making ourselves space
avoids projection.
when we speak, let’s not speak
about identity
no -isms or -nesses,
just about sheltering
the trembling creatures, we are
just about protecting
the vulnerability in our voices. \
that belief, in self-knowledge
might even allow
ample vibrant exchange, iron fizzing,
something like a conversation between
million year old magnetic traces found inside a tenth of a millimetre of rock
and a magnetometer
in the key of hysteresis \
this vocabulary we share,
made of hard and soft sounds
of silences
and recurrences
(i won’t lie)
has lashed at times,
and whipped us round
but it has also gifted us
cycles of growth
and non-linear narratives
comfortably spiky creations
and exuberant wide worlds;
so now
when we speak, intertwined,
i’m grateful for all those words
that bind and support us
leaning back away from another,
onto each other,
overlapped but holding, still.
