Willow
lyric essay or braided memories 1.
A braid, a memory, a holding of the two. Male never quite suited her, and woman was just too plain for him. It is. It was the wrapping of our past that cradled a wounded sunset. It was. It is the way my mother called it special:
To be a boy in a woman's shell. A girl in a man's image. A turquoise boy. A white shell girl.
It is. It was the way we wrapped it—the way we wrapped our lack of gender into a bandage—but the blood hadn't dried. The wet bandages were unformed. Fresh, unsensitized to the lidocaine, stained, bruised, washed up in a fury. We all try to work towards the future. So we can have a reminder of the past. A conclusion that never quite ended.
*
When you see it in the evening, the morning dew, the breathing rhythm of a willow's fallen hair. When you can become it, form it into words and places and peace and movement and remembrance of where we all began. In the stories of the stories of the narrator. In the preparation for the future. It is in the similarities of our humanity. Of our callings that tell us to live under those willow trees, and breathe within the wind's lungs. Whether heart pumping. Skin falling. Hair greying.
*
In the beginning, there was Adam and Eve. God made the earth or something to that extent and set up a bunch of rules. At least that was my perception. There was no holier than God, there was no one outside of the man and the woman. The best part of the entire section of this book is that woman committed the first sin. In a book written by men who never experienced the actual creation, it was decided that Eve would cast the first damnation. It was Eve who sinned first. Eve who was the problem. Eve who was born from man, created from man, and a part of man.
*
Sit with her. The woman, the willow, an eve, a fag once waser. Sit with Mother Earth. Bearer of it all. Gaia. Where is the dirt under her nails from? Why is her skin in shades of clay, alabaster, and lilac? Sit with her, the weaver and cooker, the homemaker, child bearer, and braid braider. Sew it into memory. Engrain it into your being. Listen to her telling the story of how the curling iron was too hot to touch.
2.
My mother never braided my hair in two, she never really touched it. It was normal I guess to never love the way your son’s hair swayed, breathed, caught into the cotton fiber towel. It was only in the simple moments. The cutting of my hair in the bathroom sink. The cutting of what felt like a briar fence in a bathroom sink. Wet toes squiggled; it was easy to fall asleep in the arms of her skin. It was soft, it was warm, it was.
*
I once heard pain travels through families until someone is ready to feel it. Where many of us generationally avoid it. Like passing a fallen tree. It will grow again (I hope). It really was the constant reminder that it will grow again, it will become something from death. From old to new again, or is it my body that is to regrow from decay?
*
The return to home. Fire pits, four-wheelers, horses, rain on Sunday, Sun on Monday. It was in the troubling rhythms of my father's footsteps. Her arms were the place to breathe and be still. A mother who cut her own sons' hair.
*
My dad usually took us to Target and naturally lashed over the driver’s seat to make sure we were going to behave. Our grand adventure usually started with, “Now listen I have a belt, and there most definitely is a private bathroom”. This is when the eyes started to bulge. Right on time. A theatre queue. “I am not afraid to pop you in the aisle, so don't make a fool of me...” The red tile is all I remember of those Target runs.
*
He
was a
patched tire.
A loose cannon.
My dad never believed that
telling stories was worth anything
unless it surrounded his
ecosystem.
Contempt.
But down deep
I always wanted to carry
his burdens. Let them ride
within me. Letting the burdens
be the load he never had to carry.
Becoming the load he never had to carry.
was a
patched tire.
A loose cannon.
My dad never believed that
telling stories was worth anything
unless it surrounded his
ecosystem.
Contempt.
But down deep
I always wanted to carry
his burdens. Let them ride
within me. Letting the burdens
be the load he never had to carry.
Becoming the load he never had to carry.
3.
I remember it so well, as if memory were lesson or the opposite of that. Where mother would sit across the table and tell me how being a woman was not the easiest, but loving a man was better than being one. Where on Tuesday evenings the garbage man would come, and her leftover meals were rotten. Where on Tuesday mornings I could smell the fragrance of itching pad Thai. If you listened carefully, you could hear how being a woman was easier than being a man. Because being a man means wiping sap and taking out trash on Tuesday mornings.
How being neither was not possible.
How being neither was not fair.
How being neither means that carrying the two would be punishment. How being neither means that when you want to come home to a clean bed, you make it, you sleep in it, you ruin it, and you do not get the luxury of a woman taking care of a man. Because being a woman and not a man and a man not a woman means that you are Berdache in the pursuit of divinity. Reed watcher turned Berdache street cleaners. Turned gown makers, make-up do-ers, and man worshipers.
*
Naps and giggles and peace and wind and books and wine and friends and lovers and hair and skin and deer and mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and air and streams and corn and tree limbs and all and nothing and growing and dying and all of it and none of it.
And telling your grandchild it never ends with us.
And holding your mother in and holding your mother out. The wind won't calm her now. The dirt is too wet for burial, and where is it in my memory where mother was buried under a casino, a child’s blue bed, a hotel, a QT, a high school, a corn field.
*
Pulling the flame forward.
Burning the timber.
Praying for the return of our firepits
and
wooden planks
and
Sanctity.
Burning the timber.
Praying for the return of our firepits
and
wooden planks
and
Sanctity.
4.
The truth must be told-change is impossible otherwise. But when its purpose is a better way of being, when continuing relations are a priority, the truth, no matter how difficult, makes it possible to realize a new, and, one hopes, happier set of possibilities.
-Daniel Heath Justice, “Why Indigenous Literatures Matter”
I am sitting alone at the biggest table. Hoping that it all falls into place. The place where the memory of the wood grain slides in, where the holding onto the table, the metal, the breathing air of what it was to be deep in the woods comes back. Deep in our escapades through timber; soot. There we could run free. There we could dance in the river skin, river grass, rusted necklace, ring, anklet, or earring.
*
It is not the desire to be wholesome, small, quiet like the woman. It is not the desire to be heavy lifters, carriers of the load, or sufferer of an emotionless tax. It is the sound in our bodies that craves to be limitless. Born again into a cocoon or sack. It is the way the brush guides my hair. It is the way the man treats me on date number three. It is the way that my body feels more alive when I wrap myself up in this cloth. This dress. This home. This color. This shape. This feeling. This rush swirled in me.
*
If you asked why I changed. Why move on to womanhood when I had the privilege of being a man your answer is not what you truly want to know. Because, truth is the only thing there is, and your heart is too closed. Because, truth is the only thing there is, and you have lost the desire to grow. Because, the truth is not within the why’s the how the when will you stops, but in the cuts, the bruises, the staring in the mirror. It’s in the morning shadows, evening shadows, and after shaving shadows. It’s in the way my moisturizer sets into my skin, the way my breasts move in rhythms of Chopin, Gilberto, Debussy, or Nicks.
*
I used to push my skin to different sides of my body in the mornings, the evenings, or after dinner. Sometimes in the middle of class, I would go to the bathroom to stare at my arms. Clinging to the cold marble. The water ran to block out the noise. Thirty seconds turned into 3 minutes. Turned into the fading of tans to whites, bags to suitcases, nipples to pepperoni slices. Disappointing.
*
It’s not all in easy answers and how-to’s. Where is the benefit in anything without thought, true connection, or personal experience? Dive into the waters yourself and float in them. Where am I being pushed where am I being held enough to open? Be open... be wide... be scared... hold the stories you hear and cherish them. Maybe you do not think of more than the two genders, maybe you do. But in truth: hold it, observe it, carry it with ease... leave it, take it, hug it, kiss it, feed it...
*
I think that is what we all want in the end anyway. A return: to a grain, to a spec, to a something that could look us in the eye and say welcome home, we have been waiting. A home where I can stretch and breathe easily. Letting my hair down in motionless fumble. Holding my skin; a fruit basket of plums. Holding my chin inside his bones. It is a home that I want. Not just the shack, wood frame, drywall, or screw.
*
I cannot remember the last time I went home, felt home. Next to fire is where I can see it most, where I can feel it most. Crackling oak and pine make the living room bright, smoking under a window seal, and breathing heavy. I start it all up. The engine for my toes. Keeping them tight, and warm, breathing them into what could be nothing other than the face I have been missing.
*
How do we live together when I can’t even swing, can’t even swim. Can’t chase a dragonfly through a field untouched, through a storm un-started. Where it is in my memory is under the fields touched, the trees cut, fish drowning in air, and deer in our meat cooler.
*
How do we live together when there is no trust? Not in ember, not in remembrance, not in elegance, poise, peace, manner, control, or relentless beauty.
*
How do we learn to live together when my skin is no longer gray, no longer tearing at the edges. Breaking under the lights of this room I can no longer feel my mother's arms, the clippers, the fire on my skin. I can no longer smell the willow during bloom, the leaves, the breasts, the bench crackling in splinter.
*
I could never live together, breathe together, rhythm together, shake together, shed together, nor hold together the ember that is our last dance.