Homely, lovely

For some it is the light, but for me, the darkness that opens a pathway. I let it pour into that space at the base of my neck between the clavicles, that little hollow, a bowl of shadow and pulsing.

Decades ago finding my body homely, I read that you should look long into a mirror and find at least one place to love. To stand unclothed in a room full of sun and fluorescent lights was too much. I piled on layers, noticed the intricacy of a web near the ceiling, shuffled to the kitchen to make tea, watching the loose leaves float, unfurl, bloat, then sink.

Season after season, I wondered if the spider in the corner was the same spider or a different one. Did you know it’s possible to brush your hair at the bathroom sink, looking at the strands of a web instead of your own strands, your own face?

Several homes later, awake with moonlight pooling on the floor, I was boiling water for chamomile with lavender. Glancing down, surprise, there was the scar along my right foot, it’s subtle filigree after years of healing.

Suddenly I adored that scar, that foot. The constancy of carrying me—how far, how long?

Dropping down onto a rug, I ran a finger along the ridge, massaged the bones, the strangeness of those knobby toes, the rough skin on the heal and the tough metatarsal pads. I have paws, that thought, a happy epiphany.

Rising, straining the leaves from the tea, letting my feet take me to a window, I saw how darkness polishes everything. A sheen on the maples’ bark, the pebbled road a stream of stars, ferns and feral grasses glittering, shrubs holding purple deep inside.

Pregnant. The darkness tells how each thing, every being, is full of something more.

I knew, without seeing, there were deer stepping in tree shadows and bats skimming and scraping their webbed wings into the sky. Sometimes it is enough to know they are there, which is also here with you.

In the glass, looking at me, were my own eyes, my neck, and that hollow, the suprasternal notch, a tiny basin of dark. It was lovely. Translucent and deep.

When I lifted my hand to touch that space, I was reaching into the whole of night.