Before this very moment
I was someone else
And before this
very
moment
I was also someone else.
I could not have known the me I am now,
before.
Before sitting in this peach velvet chair that I found on the side of the road and lovingly cleaned, only to find when I finally sat down in it that it makes the sweetest saddest groan when a body presses down onto its tired springs
Before putting on this shirt that reminds me of something my mother would have worn, except that it would have hung more loosely on her, especially those last years
Before my time on this earth, it was my mother’s time and before her, it was my grandmother’s time, and so on and so on and so on, so that there were so many befores where each woman sat in a groaning chair with tired springs and wore a shirt that hung more or less loosely that it did on the woman before her.
Before us all there was no time. No chair or shirt or pen or paper.
Before us all there was just beauty. I see it in us. I feel it in my own body - sometimes - before I think too much, I feel the beforehand beauty of all of us.
The beforehand beauty is so small and strong that it could cut me with it’s light/love like the sliver of sun that filtered through the slightly open curtain and crept along my mother’s skeletal body as she lay in her brass bed, curled with her head at the foot. How it danced along the outline of her form up the wall and then back down onto our hands, holding each other.
Before, we were separate. Then, we were one.
After this I will not be better. I will not know the answer or even the question.
After this I will still be worried and ashamed and doubtful.
After this I don’t want to be afraid
but I’m afraid I will.
After the fear comes the dance between push and pull between wanting and not wanting between leading and following.
After that
There might be something
But maybe not.
But maybe.
After that
There could be this queen that’s been rising in me. The queen that Lily wanted to be when she grew up.
The queen with boobs and big flying feet
or legs
or wings.
The queen that is sovereign and looks out onto her realm with arms draped over the arms of her throne, wrists dangling. (No groaning springs in this chair!)
The queen that surveys the war zone after the war and says
Now then.
After that
there is no after
because after that
we live.
We push the plow
and plant seeds
and things grow
and things die
and the sun rises and sets
and the circles keeps circling
and the stone remains
day after day after day after day
and this just becomes
a blink.
Mom was right after all
Life is tough and then you die.
So, what to do after that?
Sip ice water and let it crinkle your tongue.
Watch the light show.
Watch everything.