Live Solstice Salon with Open Mic Readings!
“I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June.” – L.M. Montgomery
“I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June.” – L.M. Montgomery
These past 12 weeks of Visceral Self were so powerful, tender, and extraordinary. We cannot wait to hear snippets of work that came from it. (If you didn’t participate in the Visceral Self but want to come to the Salon, no worries, please come and listen! And don’t forget, you can work the curriculum at your own pace whenever; it is archived permanently in order for paid subscribers here).
Thank you to everyone who joined the Live Salon!! We will use this post as an archive of the time we shared.
And a special THANK YOU to the readers, your words and voices mean more than you’ll ever know. Check out the amazing fragments that were shared in the comments of this post.
Just popping in here to say that the only reason I'm not with you celebrating this Salon in the comments right now is because I'm on an essay deadline! I will be back--it was an incredible, beautiful hour!
My piece I read aloud today, from Week 12's exercise, making a thing of all the things over 12 weeks:
I Am Becoming
I remember salty air, my tiny fingers in her warm hand, our toes dancing in the surf. I remember safe. I would not float away. Shards of seashell stick to my feet, tickling me. Mommy’s good girl, big girl, best girl.
My mother watches the ocean like there’s a secret out there only she knows. I breathe in the distance between us, measuring it, making friends with it. My heart is a wild, tender thing I cannot contain. It won’t be captured or stilled. I am its servant. One day it will stop beating. I can run and run only to collapse against its desperately fluttering wings.
***
Her mouth tugs my nipple, the breasts release their milk and dribble down her chin. I wipe her face and bring my finger to my lips. Sweet, sticky, raw. She smells of toast and marmalade. I sing the lullaby she’s heard since before she came. She stops sucking, listens, sighs. This much beauty can be hard to bear.
I gave birth to another before I could give birth to myself. Hurry, hurry, the body said. Why do we move across this earth like lost creatures when all we want is to be found? I do not know this place. But it knows me. I wait to be discovered.
I slip bare bottomed into the murky blue tea of the lake, my breasts heavy but alive, nipples tingling in the cool air. Tendrils of cold snake up my legs and curl around my waist. I turn toward my daughter and offer my hand. This is nice, I say. Yes, she says. We look at the pines and the birch trees and the birds swinging through the branches. I squeeze her hand tight. Once she swam in my waters and now we float through this world entwined.
***
She waves a hand over her eyes, the membrane between worlds too thin to bear. I kiss her cheek and whisper, “You can let go now.” Salt of the earth, she and I. “We have come to the end of questions,” the poem reads. But I have so many still. Who am I on this earth if not my mother’s daughter? Her hand squeezes mine. She tells me with her body when the words are all gone: You are my girl.
Splattered mango on the wet road, exposed and tender, ravaged by a beast.
Maybe it’s me. Red hibiscus blooms impaled by the rain, too fragile to hold. Is it my trail of tears or yours? In the shower, I lift one breast and with a trembling finger trace the nipple. Tingle in my throat, my groin. I am sea, sand, animal, earth. I am becoming.