something like birth

because we are not born by mistake, because nothing gets born by mistake.  at the end of a season where witches turned back into trees, and the dog languages i heard in my sleep turned into nothing more (nothing less) than barking at the moon, and that same moon gave us something like a flood, one that lasted for enough time to get the idea that this was not by mistake, i counted the old ghosts who were still in my house.  they were asleep on the guest beds, twisting in their sleep, and wanting someone to come wake them up, but they would never spell it out, and it was time for them to start spelling things.  they slept like things that haven't yet learned how to long for something lost, and i was too mortal to tell them how to do it so that it might work: how to take that moment that never turned into a kiss, even though you wanted it to, and roll it into a small and glittery ball, and play with it between your teeth until the whole world was suddenly painted with that blue light that only the tantrics know; how to pore over a short letter full of verbs and nouns and nothing decorative, and learn how to read secret desires between the literal meanings of things; how to want something you are not supposed to have, and keep wanting it long after the morning comes to tell you why two big noses will never kiss.  they were asleep on the beds, and i wanted to be polite, so i told them they could linger, while i started to clean, hoping to myself that they would eventually get the hint (they never did).  it came like an interruption, something like birth, the ones that come at one in the morning, death can always come unannounced, but birth is always expected, because there are signs.  this is when the body starts to grow outward, this is when the noises under the stairs start to sound more like threats than charming beasts in the wilderness, this is when the chord starts to speak, and that soul from somewhere else starts to see the room as less of a room and more of a home, and your vision starts to do funny things...i always think it's the dead coming to collect something they forgot after the last party, the one that ended so late, but sometimes it's something new, not dead at all, not at all, and that's when my hands start to glow as if they were the most important things i own.  the priests and the prophets say this body is nothing we own, only borrow, but no one really believes them, because before we learn how to speak it, the body is all that we are, and at the end of a long day, our bodies is all that we are, and all that we own, and all that we have to share.  this is where my throat starts to tighten, and this is where my heart starts to murmur, having waited for so long that it has already forgotten what it was like to be furious, what it was like to be at the wrong stop for too many turns of the sun and the moon, this is where my hands start to crack from the cold, and this is when my fingers start to tremble, they are thinking about your face, my fingers are thinking about touching the curve of your chin, my fingers are so busy thinking that i forget they are trembling at all.  i've been awake, i've been entertaining the ghosts who won't wake up and won't go home, i've been awake and cleaning this room, a room that is starting to look more like a home where something can be born, these fingers of mine are trembling and telling me stories about something that might be ready to be born.  and my heart is a lighthouse, something to direct anyone but the one who lives there.  and my thoughts are empty, like tiny poems that don't need to mean anything to anyone, small waves that lap against the shore in order to make room, to make room, everything in me is telling me that my body knows it's time to start making room.  something like the end of the world.  something like the beginning of a revolution.  something like a shudder, something like a murmur, something like a sigh, something like a birth.