oh, eleanor, your promises lay flat against my heart. in spite of it all, i can still feel the space where you laid your hands in rest across my neck. i defiled my temples and abandoned my posts to keep that memory, the only one i have. here, where i last knew that touch, i named you everyday in the blades of grass at my feet and the quiet pulse of blood in my veins. eleanor, eleanor, eleanor...
i can recall an earth-warm place where we sat drinking tea and asking the winds our fate. like a mist, your lilting voice spread wide and soft against the heavy night, a solemn prayer, a humble offering. you heard a call and i followed you into the tangled wood, torn skin and skirt a small price to pay for the humming of our fingers as they brushed each other. at the end there was only an empty field, a broken camp fled of dancing women and fortune tellers. we scoured the ground for a sign and found a handful of coins. the gypsy faces printed on the wooden tokens were a poor excuse for divination, so we took our cups and swirled our own tasted tea leaves to read our future path. the result was muddled and false. so you left me standing there with the cups and the coins as you promised your way backwards and away from me.
and i stood there as the world grew in around me, listening for the familiar tremble in my heart, waiting for you to come and find me. i rooted myself down so that you would always have a home. i stood silent under rain and snow and punishing sun so that you could always find me. but, even though i have been waiting for a thousand years, i can no longer remember who you are coming to find. so i let the cups and the coins fall from my aching fingers and i lower my tired arms. all the broken pieces lay like shattered suns across the kitchen floor, and i will not sidestep them today. for all that will not appear or disappear, i lay myself open to see it tumble out- the cowardice and fear and schizophrenic crush of everything i cannot see clearly, just in blurs, as i fall/fly past.
i will not wander the earth for you, i will not stay in this place til you come for me. i will walk until i remember my own name and then i will stop and dance with the world and say 'thank you'.
