A Weekend At Home

As she pushed the couch against the wall, she tugged gently on my arm. "C'mon Autumn", she urged, "Let's dance". I rose from the couch with an elongated sigh, grinning from ear to ear, "Well, if I have to".

We joined hands, giggling uncontrollably over who would lead. I patiently walked her through the steps, humming along with Blue Skies as it echoed through the living room. The music looped as Frank Sinatra narrated our faulty and hesitant movements. Mom read the paper on the couch, occasionally glancing up at us to comment on our obviously professional skill. We perfected our twirls and counts, putting on a final performance for a zealously applauding audience of one.

I walked over to the couch, moving the paper from her lap. "You know you want to", I laughed. I had forgotten the almost thirteen inch difference between our heads, as I attempted to dip her back toward the floor. It was then that Mother let out that whole-hearted he-haw laughed that I hadn't heard since childhood.

I hadn't danced with my sister in almost a decade, ever since we became sisters instead of friends. It hadn't danced with my mother since the difference in our heights was reversed. The age and miles between us had created a gap that at times seemed vast enough to swallow the essence of our relationship. The music carried on until we all could no longer stand. When it faded to silence, stillness returned to the house.

I wondered if all houses occasionally broke out into fervent dancing. My eyes swelled as I scanned the room. Mom had returned to the paper, and Rachael to the television, as if we hadn't just emitted light onto the normally bleak backdrop of silent fields.

We had had a moment of pure joy. We had, if only fleetingly, been slumber party girlfriends. We were joined by more than blood, but a common bond of femininity. I couldn't believe that we were moving into an era in which we could all be sisters solely because we were women and not because lineage had predetermined it.

It may have only been a dance party of three, but I couldn't help but feel that under the cloud of Frank Sinatra in that dusty country living room more had moved than just three pairs of feet.

I Can't Help But Love You

There are times that I cling to you and know that you are more than a mere fleshed head rest.

The curves around your eyes and cheeks, the ones that pull together when you are worried and dance when you laugh, trace a map that I inevitably lose myself in.

The corners of your mouth, the ones that pull taught, are repetitive and unchanging. They reflex whether you fight back a smile or hold inward tears, and can't help but scribe words that speak a truth only I can read.

The mirrored glances that linger longer than you let on; I can see them clearly in the glassiness of your eyes.

The folds of your palms match those of my own, an origami of identical individuality.

Of course, physicality alone does not sum of the total of my affection for you. Oh, this affection.
I could never begin to carefully place words together in order to explain how I feel, for fear I would never be able to rest with an adequate compilation.

I could never begin to explain the way my face involuntarily brightens when I see you.

My fingers involuntarily drum on surfaces when they are lonely for you.

My heart involuntarily seizes and relaxes at the same time when I see that you are calling.

In short, I cannot resist you.
My face. My hair. My hands. My mouth. My heart. My soul cannot resist you.

We are as irresistible and inevitable as progress. We are as principal and paramount as air.

Adagio For Strings

And there I sat, cross legged and weeping on my kitchen floor with a partially clean pot in my left hand. All at once I was vulnerable and weak, so insignificant in the vastness of beauty itself. It was as if Beauty had somehow manipulated the air, forcing my lungs to rise and fall at the whim of a foreign substance. They constricted, knowing that this fleeting moment was not meant to be experienced within the bounds of earthly time.
My hands shook along with my seemingly broken spine, my mortality shattered in an instant. I had left the confines of my skin in that moment, recognizing the fragile state of all the swirled around me. The pot eventually fell from my hand as the music climaxed, the string symphony mourning aloud unabashedly. This was it. This was what it felt like to be completely, exhaustively free.
I dried my face with a dish rag as the music ceased, still with both amazement and fear.
May art always move me to unbidden weeping. May God continue to fascinate me with my own, pitiful, humanity.