SURVIVORS INSPIRING ME, AT PENN STATE I am on tour with my recently released Expanded, Second Edition of my book, the scorched earth, and am currently in State College, PA, preparing for two speeches during the week ahead, one at Penn State and…
CONJURING (or I LOOKED FOR THE WORDS TO TELL YOU)
I looked for the words to tell you. I want you to come to me, here, before spring claims me for her own, before the wind reaches for my hair to pull at me until I follow him. I was made for vastness, for open spaces, for the overturned bowl of the sky I long to lift into. I wanted to be held, but not in the way that rooms or names or the past hold you in, but held the way a riverbank offers direction, the way longing brings you back, the way the moon floods her light that calls you to the courtyard in the otherwise full-on darkness that settles but does not hold claim. I wanted to find the configuration of words that would let me tell you that I want you to come to me, and hold me here, with you, beside you, like a spark of flame in the unknown universe that I would recognize and return to, again and again. Not because you would follow me, but because I could not live without your light. There were no words I trusted to say this to you, so I opened the door to the wind and said only your name, aloud, like a conjuring, so that the wind might find you and bring you to me.
© 2019 Dora E. McQuaid
All peace to each one of you today. Dora