Two Songs Rewritten for the Tunes Sake

A Warm Sound

Carolina is curved
like the wing of a bird.

Our feathers intertwine;
a basket of flight,
the nest crumpling
and still my heartbeat
next to hers,
the steady mother thump
asserts that we once
fit together like two shells
before I was sent away
proclaiming the whirl of salt
on my lips,
my daughter stain,
one less babies ear on her shores.

Here are the ghosts
of everything sliding up across
the ocean swatch:
tell them I know
the warm sound of home
that assumes the shape of a birds wing,
the taste of warm fruit,
the sea trapped in a shell,
the road that disappears
to the west.

The return of the cold is dredging up memories of the last time the weather swung from hot to cold in Saint Louis, and I was here to see it. This place has started to seem more real now that I can recall four seasons living in it, that I can share my own memories of the strange flux from hot to cold in the midwest. Here is one:

Last October I was still reeling from my move, still lying in bed each morning and looking at a strangers walls. I thought then that it was, perhaps, a little histrionic to say that I was grieving, but in hindsight this is probably the truth. The process of leaving my childhood home was the same familiar sadness of losing a lover or a friend. I remember the heaviness of my body getting in and out of bed, the inconvenient gesture of getting dressed and looking presentable. The unimaginable task of befriending people and forging a life comparable to my old one.

I remember one freezing morning, driving to church choir and praying, literally speaking the words out loud in my cold car (since the window was bashed out and I was unemployed and unable to fix it, my breathing crystallized in the air despite the heater), that someone would ask me about my day. I think secretly, though I did not add this to my prayer, I wanted someone to notice my grief. To accept that I was nearly consumed with feeling like a misfit, everything from not owning any acceptably warm clothing to not being able to call someone up for lunch or coffee, and all the nuances of acceptance that lie in between. I had C, and thank god for him, but while C is good for many things (among them: coaxing me through that difficult winter), running to target to peruse the women's clothing (among other things that I yearned for) was not one of them.

Each morning at church, the members of our choir "passed the peace", and usually the passed it right over my head, stopping only cursorily to shake my hand or smile thinly in my direction. Truly, I can't blame anyone for it. I myself would also likely not offer a hug or a warm(er) handshake to the aloof, slightly sad looking girl in the back row. As such (and this is where the histrionics reared their ugly head, both now and then) , the "peace" offered me little actual peace. So much so that I can recall mentioning several times to C and my mother how I wished weekly to disappear during this perfunctory moment of togetherness .

That October morning when the peace came and I reached out my hand for its obligatory shake, I got instead a warm hug, probably the warmest most important hug of that year. Now, we're not talking a bear hug. I'm not even sure it could be labeled as anything more than a "It's great to know you, peace be with you" hug. I'm sure this person went on that day and didn't think anything more about it. But it rallied my courage. I did not miss sweet tea or the ocean or any other South Carolina cliche in that moment.

I have never told this person what that meant to me, lest I sound crazy or desperate. I promise I'm not. But, on the off chance that she reads this, I hope she knows what that meant to me.