She got up to go to the bathroom
leaving me on an East Village fire escape
with colored lights and tree fronds tickling my cheeks as they sucked down seltzer.
She was gone,
and I stared at the fronds,
waving in the early summer breeze
and suddenly my third eye
opened like a golden red light
and I was strung with the other bulbs, shifting in the wind.
My atoms sparkled with night air, and I felt the miracle of them,
strung together in the shapes and formations that made me,
for this moment,
on a fire escape in the East Village,
sipping seltzer-
I wondered if someone had spiked my water
felt a moment of panic flush my face with hot
What Was Wrong With Me?
Nothing.
That was the point.
She and I had chewed on our problems so much they’d crumbled like cookie
and I was left with just the sweet.
They dropped away,
and I Knew,
for that moment,
the miracle of my life which if I could just remember would treat differently,
would not be beating up this way.
I wondered if a friend of mine was on retreat somewhere, meditating,
sending metta to me in large bundles.
Maybe one of my ex-boyfriends was thinking of me in one of their Brooklyn apartments,
sending me the love they forgot.
But, no, this wasn’t about them.
This was just a random moment of release,
of expansion, of oneness-
maybe the result of hours of moving meditation on the yoga mat
or hours of lucid dreaming,
or hours of soul searching in the eyes and sights of the City,
or hours of writing questions in the form of poems.
Or it was just a moment, delivered,
saying… Look Here. Feel That.
“What are you doing?” she asked, my head in the bushes.
“Thinking.”
She sat, and we served each other more problems on cold dishes,
the human ritual of anti-grace.
I chewed on the tough bits, as was my habit.
But underneath I felt a deep sweet spot humming in my heart like chocolate on the tongue.
That part was bored of this conversation and wanted to toast it instead.
That part was real,
and was love.
-written by Sarah Herrington
Sarah was recently chosen by Oprah Magazine as an Up and Coming Poet and is gratefully completing her first book of poems to be published next month. She also teaches kids/teen yoga extensively in NYC and is working on a book about children’s yoga called, Om Schooled, forthcoming Fall 2011.
www.sarahherrington.com
