Still Within Each Other
still within each other
for Jay
You’re gone
there, at sea
perhaps only a horizon,
distant thought of here, of me
though I’d like to think
you’ve seen me, my
silhouette somewhere in the wake
somewhere in the line
between sleep and dream
as I see you cast into this
winter sky, this shallow light
these familiar trees, always
you, it seems, standing there
as something more than memory,
you’re so far away that all I have is wish
and I wish you could see me today
as something more than picture
something more than transposition
something more than reflection,
than subtle dissipating fragments
because today I see myself as more
than a filament of doubt left by mother
I see something more of this light
and perhaps if you were here you’d
see in my eyes what I rarely see
and you’d fathom another depth of me
yet perhaps you see me always
as whole, as something more
than I see myself, than this
sadness from a mother who worked too much
who tried to love and did but was tired
and you see, this is what I’ve been seeing
when I look down at my pregnant body
I see myself as her, her never seeing herself
as something that could be enough
as something whole, as something of depth
and now this, this heartbeat within me
has brought me to see a certain grace
and I feel untangled from a part of her
though I was once a pulse within her
as she was within her mother and
I wonder if she looked at her pregnant skin
And saw something more than a mirror
reflection within of a mother who clung
to bitterness, who left her with this,
this fragment of an unexplored self
that grew as concentric circles in water
unknowingly expanding toward distant horizons
and you see, though you can’t see me,
today I feel separated from mother after mother
and have shared with this other
this exploring, this pulse of earth
this feeling of rock and snow and happiness
in the depth of a mountain’s silhouette
and I just want you to see my cheeks
after the cold, and notice how my hair
held the snow in its curl, and how it shaped
my face and how when I looked down
I felt beautiful and loved and seen
as though you heard me hundreds of miles away
and reached out your hands to brush my wet hair
behind my ear, to warm my cheeks, to kiss my lips
to make our hearts beat a little quicker
as we, so distant, are still within each other
Though there seemed a vastness in the night sky, there existed within it a space as enclosed and tranquil as this distant landscape framed by nearby pines. And though my route to reach this narrowing space might appear the same day to day, it is part of this natural world and part of a rambling mind, and thereby filled with such intricacies and changes. There is a certain comfort in choosing the same approach, as it becomes meditative. My mind can relinquish to the grace of breath and movement and being. Today the air was winter-thick,—damp and warm—,and here it smelled richly of evergreen. I thought of how many times I’ve arrived at the same place, and how many times I’ve arrived alone. I thought of how many times I’ve looked into that distance, through these trees, between those mountain silhouettes, and felt a sense of awe. Yet today, 22 weeks pregnant, I could feel the slight movement of another body within me, and had such a clear realization that I was sharing this heart’s experience of night and light and rock and mountains and breath so intimately with another. It was the first time in my pregnancy I was able to feel as though I wasn’t just a replica of my own mother, bound to repeat a cycle. I wanted you, there at sea, to see me as I experienced this. I wanted to look at you and tell you what I felt as I looked into tonight’s night sky, and I suppose I did, because this love does have a way of drawing something so distant, so close, so as to be so beautifully enclosed within.