I Paint Your Life with Words. {poetry}
{source}
What is it like to bear witness? To watch, see and feel so deeply, the imprint in the cellular memory becomes palpable, visceral, tattooed. To be that awake. Curious.
Attentive. Centered, and still enough to see that a fallen leaf leaning on a crack in the sidewalk is everything. A story to write. A vein to tap. To heighten the subtleties to point where they magnify. To find a grandness in the ordinary, and in the things that go unnoticed. The unobvious. Like seeing the sadness in someone’s eyes even when they’re laughing.
I can pass you on the street, and even if you don’t notice me, I see you.
Because I want to. And I take you home with me. The way your shoulders sway to the movement of your stride and the wind swirling up, catching a ride on the inhale journeying into your lungs. I may never see you again, never know your name, but this day, I take you home with me, and you, the stranger, becomes a part of me embedded into the life I paint. With words, breath, feet planted on ground, soaring.
***
You’re the one who was dancing in the kitchen
All free-flow and being who you are
I love the way your curls twirled and tossed
and flipped and flopped
and dropped as you dropped
all story and pretense
all judgment of you as anything else but
the dance that was dancing you
in that kitchen
Bananas hung off a crescent hook
from the counter’s lip
a bowl of cherry-red apples
burst out like blooms
in a glass vase on the back stoop
Your body juicy and loose
skin plump and aglow
as you mouthed the words of the song
that drummed the sound
through your holy hips
Oh yes,
I remember you
I was there that night
sliding the glass doors open
to invite the night in
I thought she might have this dance with you
and she did
Swooped you up in a summer’s scent
and moved your feet off the ground a bit
No one else noticed but me,
and I went home that night
to a blank canvas and a jar of paint
And I painted you
in the kitchen, dancing
I painted you
sitting in my own kitchen
swaying to and fro by the window
stroking the brush across the textured mind
and memory
of your free-falling dance
bending and leaning with abandon
I held out my hand to
the first stroke of blue
that my brush moved so smooth
across my palate
And my hair fell
into my eyes
as I imagined how wide
that sky is inside you
to dance like that
in the kitchen
Downstairs with the doors wide open
the starlight closing in
the night curving around your waist and wrists
like silver-bangled bracelets
clanging together
to the rhythm of the tune
that strummed your heart alive
My heart forever dances inside
thinking about that.
***
Leslie Caplan is a fiercely courageous heart who has found her way whole through the alchemy of writing. She is a powerful advocate for writers, and uses the depth of her skill and innate abilities to support them going deeper into their stories. A professional editor, writing coach and internationally published writer, Leslie brings it to real with an unwavering passion for honesty & fluidity of voice, heart & content. You can find her at her website.
***
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