“On with the dance, let joy be unconfined is my motto, whether there’s any dance to dance, or any joy to unconfine.”
–Mark Twain
repression
Fear and Seeing Aura…
It Wasn’t Death She Saw
But life:
skin dancing with flesh
like silk curtains that swirl in the wind
above her mother’s window
up up now puff! and in again
Or breath – is the wind breathing?
She’d been playing in the grass when it happened:
the snake flung
from the mower’s blade, rainbows
of ribbons in the air
rainbows rainbows everywhere, catch a ribbon for your hair
She wrapped the pretty pieces in willow leaves and grass.
When she told her mother what she’d seen –
the way life
leapt out of the snake
just like a ballerina –
her mother beat her,
scrubbed her tongue with salt
but Mama, it was beautiful, like fireflies at night
She learned to hold her body
very still.
– Kirstin Hotelling Zona