MIRRORED MAPPINGS

(what is created, it has always been)

You told me, walk softly in the desert that births bone,

dreams pasts of its body, stitches bone

into sand’s living shroud, sings

in languages never spoken;

Let them be spoken now

into a past of your own choosing.

I asked, What good it is to choose

between things nonexistent? How does one shape

minutes and days out of an unlived past,

an emptiness of bones to sing

unspoken languages

stitched into neverborn mouths?

You said, Choosing is not in detail;

no, choosing is a feeling in your chest

that unfolds Birdlike, that makes space for holiness,

hollows you out for new growth—

that, too, is yours;

claim the hollowness inside

and fill it with a voice to command.

I hollowed myself until the skin sagged

over my ample future-flesh; I folded the future

into the folds of my belly, made

an emptiness in my ribcage

for a past to be born.

I filled it with the voice to command

and exhaled that;

I spoke gently,

asking the form to shape itself.

The sand called its name,

deepnames under the ground whispered starfire

as in the first days, when Bird had brought

stars down into our waiting hands,

never existing before;

Yes, the stars whispered to me

their stories, what they would share,

in languages unspoken

—spoken here for millenia.

The hands of the desert rose up,

shaped by the whirlwind, sown for me

these smallbone garments, to walk out the sands,

unbirth my birth or perhaps affirm it,

test the tenets of the wind,

and all of the weavings I had made.

Walking, I filled the folds

of my once-supple skin with water and fat,

with my age, until I undo it,

with my youth, for which I do not yearn.

Listen, I said, I carry the desert inside me,

even as I walk out of here:

this carpet, lovingly wrought

of tumbleweed and dust;

Listen, you said, I, too,

carry the desert inside me;

a weave of gold and liongrass

stitched with dry thunder:

This is why we met,

making each other, fearing

each other and letting that go; loving—

not loving, you said; no, too close for comfort;

honoring, then—

or better yet, accepting whole,

Seeing as you are,

rising

each to each, from this sand,

mirrored in its whirlwind.

So I told you, walk softly in the desert that births bone,

dreams a past from its body, stitches bone

into the sand’s living shroud, sings

in languages never spoken;

Let them be spoken now.