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Right cheek warmed by friendly planks,

I sprawl beneath a chosen window

that spills its sunshine on my lips,

ladles honey heat over tilted nape.

I roll from side to side, waking combs of beeswax

and provoke the floor to creak an invitation:

“You can ask me anything.”

***

Unsure, I glance to the mirror for answers,

but it speaks only shame, does not listen.

I fling away my glasses, and the judge dissolves to Wisdom:

examining my body is only one way to experience it.

***

Rising yesward on bolder knees,

I study the high ceiling,

ten tall windows with fans whirring on their sills,

the fire exit platform threaded with vines –

and this choir of generous portals shouts

“Get Your Freedom Here!”

and bids me stand.

***

Now on my feet, I allow shoulders and wrists and thighs

to shake off dutiful belittlements —

the should’s, the sorry’s, the shrinking silences —

and let them be shed and shredded on the dance floor

somewhere south of broken.

***

For once, my hips don’t apologize for their curves

and they dare me leap from mountain bridge

to thunder-soaked river, where I wrestle

with dangerous currents I’ve shunned out of fear.

Surrender to the river tugs me wild open, cracking my thick shell,

pushing, pulling, having me rolling like a beast

who slaps mud on her chest and stamps her hooves

and doesn’t care who thinks she needs a cage.

***

Being here in this dancing river

feels like returning to the fire-girl I was,

burning up caution, sadness, and grief in a healing fever,

reveling in electrical storms that crackle along my bones,

flourishing a purple cape, tasting the salt of delectable effort,

spine loose, palms grateful, instinct hushing intellect,

feet singing over noise of the brain.

Here in this movement, I inhabit my body, my rightful home.

I am a ruined barn, empty but smelling of ancient hay. I sit in a lost valley, no longer a shelter nor part of a living farm. I used to be warmer, to glow orange from lanterns on February mornings, to retain animal heat. Now my shadows fill in their outlines, brief flashes from the highway my only relief.

I am tired of being a relic, a rural ghost who attracts photographers from the city. Their insulting attention reminds me that I am just a skeleton of economies past, a symbol of romantic decay.

All my sounds are whispers and echoes now, where once I heard grunts, shouts, whinnies, cries of pain and hunger. It’s so quiet now. Ruin is quiet. My unsteady walls feel dry, brittle, so straw-like that one warm hand on my door would set me ablaze. I welcome this fire, this sweet extinction into ashes.

When it rains, I feel the blessed water soaking my beams, splashing through broken panes, swelling the hayloft floor so that I forget my ladder is broken and my stalls now shells that once held a family’s wealth and sustenance. I miss being whole. I miss being real. I miss the animals I used to protect.