Speak, Stone, Speak

Rain poem

Once rain had driven her away. 

Now she swam in it.

Tears rained inside her, diluting what was sad 

or said.

Ducks claimed her.

Leda or thirsty Danae counted golden coins and

thirsty Ardea stood watching.

Tattooing drops shattered any thoughts,

and rested, missing every word.

Her lips were sealed. Things were in pieces.

Everywhere.

Xacia was her middle name. 

The only one she had.

The one she never understood.

The one she never said aloud.

Konjac, devil’s tongue, the sponge was filling her lungs.

She still breathed easily, not knowing how.

She wrote, no thought:

“My lips are sealed.”

It was all she could say, all.

Until all was wet and gone.

Only shards of melting fire were left,

and she walked, facing the hill.

Or cliff.

She knew what was there and knew

its measure as well.

And she knew its true story.

Knew its name

its steps even

its definition.

It was all she had: a fine rain, not

a storm she would not quiet or

silence. It said things she knew.

Raised the hunger.

Left it hanging.

She smiled, again. And wrote more drops

while the tattoo continued, louder, softer, louder.

Again and again.

Marking the passage.

Up the hill, reaching Sisyphus. 

****

My lips are sealed. She wrote.

I don’t talk. I drip.

Bits of me.

Less than nothing.

I am asking.

I ask if melting is part of me.

If this liquid around me forms

other invisibilities or if

it evaporates like words in a wire

if

it thrives on my silence.

I never talk

trying to write it all. My

water is ink as green as

antiquity.

I listen to this fine, rhythmic drizzle

and want

none of it.

I drip.

Broken pedra abaladoira.

Pedra seca.

My own costa

the one whose tears

are never heard.

****

This was the story about speaking and silence. It went in both directions and never returned, and it never disappeared. The mist of its pages was heavy and damp, but that did not deter her. She had to hold it and did. It was not cold as she had expected. It was not cold and was not angry. It was merely wet and moist, unlikely to wander. Still, she had to clutch it, pull it forward, push it inside her walls, keep it safe. Keep it from wandering. With her sealed lips, that was very difficult to do.

Walls.

There are things we can never say, never need to remove from where they are held by hands or other fragments of the body. What those things are we do not know, because they come to us unasked and untranslated, in languages we do not know and will never learn. They are ice until they are gone. Even then they must remain unspoken.

Some say the unknown idiom was born in Iona, where Columba rests. Some say they don’t know. Some believe in something so old it probably never was. Islands with water that sings, whose wells are sweet, whose shapes are like sea-bound animals, caged only by the winds of the piobaireachd. Cradled music.

A language nobody knows and must not be spoken. It plays in the cold foam, building walls from rocks, never daring to be dry. Nobody knows exactly where the rocks are or what they sing. They never feel hunger. They hold rivers in their hands and swim.

Fishpeople. Xacios. Alone in the unspoken rain. Water inside, tails or legs.

Everything drips. Nothing speaks. Swans everywhere, golden, white, green, invisible. Lavinia of the flaming hair drowning in rivers and Ardea. Danae beside her, judging the unspoken, running dry and with parched heart. Unending story.

Dry stones build walls.

****

My lips are sealed, but I know now I must tell the story of the rain-charm pushing the rock up the slope and breaking the river in half. The story of a life split in two. The story of a life half-lived and lived twice.

Teru teru bōzu. Shine shine.

This is my body with rain because it is a rocking stone, a Logan Stone broken in two and unexpected. Erratic, Druidic, rock of many names from forgotten and never-learned tongues. Balanced myths, deadly and healing, moving back and forth. 

Granite, glaciered body, dangerous and fair. Gold beneath or dripping from above, nest of sparrows or swans. All anonymous. All myths.

I cannot break the seal, wax or steel chain. All would run out and lose itself in the sea. In the ocean beside me that whispers, Say nothing, you know nothing but distance. This is a truth only known to herons or Lavinia or to those who are able to sail without seeking a shore. Words only lead to the abyss. Or the maelstrom.

Should it be this way?

Do not speak, the rain and split rocks hear me thinking, and send a sob to my heart. I do not know if I can hear it, but it beats. I am headed somewhere with no name - the Hebrides, the Cíes, the islands of the St. Lawrence, the Açores. Holes in the ocean and between countries. Land without a country and pedra seca, stone perched on stone by hands that never speak. Clochoderick judging this one who was never evil but was never properly joined to a place. 

Touch me nine times and at midnight. Make me a witch. Let me open my mouth and weep my wisdom. Dredge my veins and let my blood flow like fish going upstream to spawn or downstream to die. To be split in the middle is a curse. Is Lavinia’s misery and Dante’s inferno. But I have no place to go. No clach bràth to move.

My tongue is frozen. I am only water inside and only water on the outside of my skin. I hold nothing but rain and cannot tell you a story you do not want to hear, in a language you never knew.

If I can find the bridge, a ponte de poldras with slippery smooth steppingstones, this will soon be over. The dripping, the burning, the shattered river of the past, my letterless name. Do not say it, do not wait.

This soon will be over.

I am a tomb, waiting to be heard.

Aching to survive.

Silently speaking:

My lips are dry and forever sealed.