THE BODY IS A DOOR
No one wants to stand on death's cliff edge. A
sky the color of threat, and not a child
outside. I am standing on the edge of.
Thank you, Thank you, I constantly say.
*
The number of sparrows in the tree: six.
The graupel pellets in the grass: she knows,
the Goddess. Her breath is clean of burning. You're
close to the edge when spirits wake you. You're not
of this world or the next; you press on the
membrane; footsteps and a shadowy shape
crossing the hall. This doesn't mean She's
abandoned you. Forget what you learned
in Sunday school. She walks down the street to
your house, the graupel clicks together to make
a sound like billiard balls. Then She walks by.
*
She's still here. Think of a small child's drawing:
sticks and circles for mom and dad, and half
that size, herself. Maybe a dog along
the grass, that green line. A triangle on a
rectangle. The sun in the corner fold:
that's the Goddess. Her presence is cutting
the grass away from the sky. Now and then,
you'll spot Her through an opening,
in the supermarket, in the no-where
of the night sky. In the winter cold, do
you see the stars rippling as a stream? You
*
could quiet yourself minuscule, then open
that door and step in. Comets. Lilies. Where
you end up is the fever of your soul. Do
you feel the selves of your past crowding you?
Is the breeze a rose petal? You carry
either a clear stone or fire in your
pocket, and room for all of your recent dead.
Moon and sun on either side of your chest. There's
no pill you can take for that, and also no
known cure. My dead cat's hair is in my locket,
which falls against my breastbone. I'm mourning for
the past, taped to it with duct tape. Is that
a door? A garden gate? My locket is hinged,
so I can add a trinket. It's hanging
with the weight of seven worlds, pulling on
my neck-stem, like a peony I bend, a
long way from resolution. Is your chain
the weight of a tear or the ocean? That
*
was a rude question. In the screaming greens
of spring, your heart froths, your nose opens, your
eyes dilate. Dark loam is in your throat.
Anything could grow there. Thistle, rose and
thorn, daisy for foretelling love, or the
purple clover I loved, before I was dead,
or alone in that membrane, thrust inside
it, speaking the language of mountains. You
haven't found the door yet, but you don't
give up. You watch the trees closely, you
observe branch from branch to leaf. When you hear
the tree breathing, you'll be ready. Of them
who don't search, don't worry. The tree's breathing.
The sky's diamond, the earth's star: that's you.
*
Searching for a way in, for a moment, must
compel you to give all that you have.
Of time. Of insistence. Of love. Of a
single green stem. It blows open a hole
in your being, finding the door. They
may try to distract you with tasks. You can
Oneness into your ironing press,
peel potatoes with the Goddess, it's in their
records. So much is in the gray.
His broad walk, her dark strawberry lips.
These succulents can also be doors to
shedding self like a worn out t-shirt, if
you hear the ping of the Goddess in each. You
won't get anywhere pushing the door open--
it sticks. It's swollen in the heat when
summer's on, and your ego rises; you
inflate like a life raft; the door won't open.
*
Spheres of crisp, opaque rime, the graupel will
melt in your palm. It will sting a bit. We
haven't forgotten fall, the hues you find
under your feet, the distinct smell of them
as each leaf dries, some flat and some folded.
One day a door will open: Come inside.
Some days none will, the world won't let you in.
*
I talk of doors, but haven't seen what
I speak of in a long time. They change shape,
they change season, they change shoreline or trees. I
look everyday, with words and what they mean.
My pocket is empty; I've given what
I had. Sun settles in the deep cut
of valley. She expands upward, releases shape.
I try to step into whatever is,
but today is very cold. I have made
more coffee. I am part, I am the whole.
I repeat what I know, but the words fall by
the couch, lay on the floor. Nothing's opening.
*
I scrape out the insides of the word “I.”
With a knife, I cut the ground from the word “mean.”
I have my flesh but nothing besides.
I need to look to the comfort of the
body. I must find the door in my heart.
This poem is a golden shovel using Maggie Smith's “Heart,” from Good Bones.
© Mary Ann Honaker
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| Mary Ann Honaker |
Mary Ann Honaker is the author of Becoming Persephone (Third Lung Press, 2019), and Whichever Way the Moon (Main Street Rag, 2023). Her poems have appeared in Bear Review, JMWW, Juked, Little Patuxent Review, Rattle.com, Solstice, Sweet Tree Review, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Beckley, West Virginia.
