Brilliance

Thanks to Twitter's #haikuwordgame, I wrote a poem today. It's the first in quite some time. Energies seem to have been going to the daily grind, securing a new job (starts in ten days), doing the work of another group in the series at Women in Transition. The words for the word game today are brilliance, night and fragile. I attempted a haiku, then tried gogyohka and finally realized that the combination of words called up something I have finally processed through to its end and needed more room.

Writing through something is always healing. Maybe for a time I didn't want to be healed, I just clung stubbornly to a vision I had. In sharing this draft, I am also posting to this blog for the first time in five months. I would say that I'm ashamed, but I am not. Post-divorce changes, work, parenting and exploring writing in different forms all take time and energy. I commit, however, to posting regularly or to making the decision to close this blog.

Here is the draft (work property of the author):

Brilliant

At last, one night I spilled it all,
and your lips speaking what I spoke
and that kiss, they shocked me.
The brilliance stopped my breath.

You were aware of that, the sudden
suck of air and the fierce joy as you
paused, listening. And I wonder if it was
my intense response that turned you.

The months that followed have
served their own shock, your silence
a ban that speaks shame
into my mouth, where lips met, where

tongue greeted your gentle, testing
tongue, where a sigh took voice
as it rose. Maybe it was too much.
Maybe too much of me repels.

Months of self-delusion have turned me
from myself, as I found one memory
more real than the silence, less fragile
than your arm's grip of my hips. At last

I am able to remember myself without
an assumption of you. Less jubilant
but centered. No memory matters
more than this moment.