Versions of Chai

Amid the crunch of collision, such a small thing wards off death in the moment of slow-motion crash, protecting from the reckless hand of fate, but not without cost. Sighing in the instant before impact, it warns, "This might hurt a little." Then steels itself for the inevitable task--its created purpose--and when released from duty bemoans the necessary bruises it left behind. Such a little thing, really, yet with so great a job. A small strip, narrow but strong, the very reason I am still alive.

Words crowd into my mouth, burning my tongue, pushing against lips sealed shut by fear--the paranoid, paralyzing kind. To rid the acrid taste I swallow back each incendiary noun, verb, and adjective, though the action scalds my throat. Before the pain can subside my stomach retches them up again to begin anew their acidic onslaught. Why do I not speak? How can speaking out possibly cost me more than the turmoil of keeping silent? No answer. For the questions never leave my head. Afraid to speak yet tortured for not doing so, this silence is killing me.

O Apollo, blazing golden in the sky, ruling day from a chariot of fire, think of me, Artemis, pale goddess of night. Imagine me waiting in a shadowy glade. Silver arms outstretched, beckoning you to my wild embrace. O Apollo, meet me in the dusky hues of evening and in the first, gray light of dawn, Where we-- twin halves of one soul-- can unite and once again be whole.

I wish I could slash anger across a canvas that shrieks to be seen. Or draw bare lines whispering of loneliness so that all who look turn away with wet eyes. I wish I could paint joy in colors of the sun with laughter pealing from the end of the brush so that hearts and the corners of mouths are lifted. But my paint-by-numbers hands only copy laboriously images conceived by another. I content myself with words and brush them across the page-- the only canvas I will ever paint.