Fissure

Fissure

 My heart is breaking.

 The same fissure along the same fault lines.

 The approach to the volcano is well-worn. The heat, predictable. The explosion, a roiling sound in the throat of the

Earth.

But this time, I turn and walk back along the greening trail until the lava rocks are covered and hidden.

I leave a stone, a feather, a red string

where I would have placed my heart.
and I walk away

intact

into
the rest of my life.

Leaving

I miss a lot of things.

Like the sound of your heartbeat through the machine that kept you alive. Or was it the picture of a line dipping and climbing, which looked loud, like a sound?

And I know I would have heard silence had it flattened out

But it didn’t.

You did.

And (take credit), your exit was indistinguishable from the dawn

and my earphones recorded the motion of breath in each song,

so many breaths before I noticed / you were gone.

O.K. That is a lot for a short moment

that lasted less than a second

of breath.

Breathe!

And where were you in all of this?

Recording sound and breath and absence like you owned it.

No.

Stipulations say that details in absentia cause misdemeanors of flight.

You left without warning,

the tarmac still warm from releasing your traction

Come back and I will explain how you never were supposed to leave like that

without me.

New Vision

She has coins dangling around her belly in a string of silver chain. She moves to an old song. She is a gypsy.

How she recognizes me, I will never know. She sees me out of the corner of her mascara-ed dark eye behind a ringlet of black hair across a room full of tables, some with food; others empty.

She shakes, shimmies, and glides up to me. She offers her hand and does not take it back when I extend mine. She’s light in her step and heavy in her hips. Her belly sings a million songs. I hear my name in one of them.

Cuba, Yoga, and Love

I am re-posting a link to an interview I did with Michelle Embree on my memoir-in-progress, BESOS FROM CUBA: LOVE UNDER THE RADAR. Thank you, Michelle, for your thoughtful questions and for such a lovely opportunity to reflect on this work!

https://michelleembree.wordpress.com/2015/02/22/cuba-yoga-love-and-writing-memoir-with-sarah-shellow/

In The Middle of Time

blue jeans

frayed at the edges

like waterfruit

seedy and split

open

exhausted by

the day,

or was it

the night?

pooling in a

dark corner

of the room where the

highway buzzes outside the

motel suite--

a luxury

this place in

the middle of

time