Author: Luisa A. Igloria

The color of my longing is mineral: obsidian 
sheen in the time it takes for language to surface,

the compass points of intention hardening 
in the sun. I am saturated with the intensity 

of its darkness. Such depth renders 
cave-like spaces inside me— I turn them 

into grottoes, gathering bits of wreckage 
and lighting them as fires, so the blue 

of my longing can burn. Imagine a ship 
laden with memory and salt, setting out 

with full sails of intention, then 
drifting in circles from the sheer 

magnitude of desire— the kind of ocean 
that keeps widening even when nothing moves. 

But this too is abundance: so much blue, 
a whole sky seems to have fallen into the water.

Crows land with a thud on the eave
above the front step, in view just outside 
my writing window. I keep still so I can watch 

feathers like rain shedders of glossy black, 
before they shake their shoulders and fly
off again. Last night at the café, 

our friend the linguistics professor 
now retired since she turned 77, told us 
she'd started on her memoirs: hard going 

sometimes. I can imagine it might be,
wading back into the currents of a life 
after congratulating yourself on heaving

back to land, after the treacherous 
parts. Dates are hard to remember, names 
come back to you in the shower, then fade 

somewhere in the folds of towels. 
That kind of life-writing isn't just 
bookkeeping. If I write quickly, 

perhaps the page will snag what I want 
to keep, but also what I want to avoid. 
This body wants to rest, stop 

rationing energy and money 
so they don't run out, stop running 
to pull back those it loves from 

the brink. But if I don't move, 
will the eddies settle into calm? 
Something startles the bird— a shadow 

larger than itself, human noise 
in the street— and tips it 
back out into the sky. 

I don't have much to boast of in the way
of clocking in at dawn and out at midnight,
grease in kitchens and bathrooms to clean,
chickens to pack into crates and trucks
or patients into gurneys. For a spell,
long ago, I taught toddlers and budding
ballerinas in the basement of a local hotel,
where mirrors ran along one wall and barres
along three. Small fingers clung to the wood
trying first and second position and plié,
except one day when one of the girls licked
the whole length out of boredom. And once,
for a summer, I sketched dresses for a seamstress 
who wanted more than hems and alterations: imagine 
women with hair swept up high in the style of the day,
their swan-like throats emerging from scooped or
plunging necklines. Cocktail skirts, beadwork
reflecting the light, some fantasy world where
no one had to worry about sweat or traffic
or overdue bills. There were times I wished 
I'd apprenticed to a sushi chef and learned 
to wield a sharp, clean blade, and times I wanted 
only to walk the marbled length of museum galleries, 
opening window after window on the centuries. 
What I know now came mostly from learning 
to sit still, opening books and letting language
take me out of myself and back again until I 
could find my way to some shore resembling 
knowledge, and there at last make my own fire. 

You've kissed the marble cheeks of martyrs, 
the foot of God at least twice in your life
and afterward wiped the painted wound 
in the palm of his right hand with a hanky. 
You do as you're told, though you know 
the body on the bier off to one side 
of the nave isn’t a body but a plaster 
replica, more than a foot longer 
than actual human height and draped
with a loincloth of velvet. This is a time 
when people don’t carry little plastic bottles 
of hand sanitizer in their purses or seem to care 
very much about germs. Certainly, no one wears
face masks or has obsessive thoughts, hours 
after such encounters, even after learning 
that a single milliliter of saliva carries
anywhere from a hundred thousand to a million 
microbes. What do such shows of devotion 
give the faithful, besides unblinking belief 
that ritual works in a world where doggedness 
might be stronger than fate or faith? What happens, 
happens mostly because something else did— a prior 
cause. A switch flipped in the upper registers 
tips dominoes and marbles down and down and down. 
Shouldn't you have been rewarded by now for your 
endurance, for bending toward what kept asking 
for your love though it didn't think it necessary 
to answer back? Before public fountains shaped
like lions or country girls, you stop to watch 
water scatter gold-edged coins, and move on. 

At first you ignore the small 
black flecks skittering across 

your field of vision like flies 
tipped in gold, until you learn

they're made by the jelly-
like substance inside the eye

as it shrinks and loosens 
from the retina. Then there are 

the cracking and popping sounds 
your body makes: fingers, knees, 

shoulders. It's something the doctor 
calls crepitus, a word that sounds 

like what it means: broken down,
dilapidated. You read somewhere

that the trick is to lean into these
changes so you're not smacked

unaware by them; so the hand, lifting 
a cup or sliding a button into its hole,

isn't betrayed by intention tremor.
In yoga class, the teacher raises her arms, 

instructs you to be a tree. Root one foot 
and place the sole of the other inside 

your thigh or against your calf, trying to learn
what you didn't even know the body could do.

Push a pair of weights up toward the ceiling 
from where you lie, balancing your shoulders 

against a large ball made of soft elastic
as you make a bridge with your hips.  

We learned about the world
through stories— how a jealous 
sky swallowed a woman’s ornaments
and a beast rose from the waters
to steal the lustre of the moon.

We threw ourselves
into the only weapons we knew—
Our bodies, dancing old rituals,
clanging the music we fashioned 
from metal and fire.

Astrologers point out planets 
aligning. Stars die and give birth
to new ones. Craning our necks to see, 
do we wonder if they ever want to see us?
When it rains, we put pails underneath 

leaks in the ceiling. We open the lids 
of metal drums, so they can store water
for the dry seasons. Birds rise in droves, 
their dark bodies practicing their own 
cursives on a slate. 

When a shingle in the roof
of heaven comes undone, we know 
we'll hear the echo of thunder, 
that voice saying the world and all
in it remains unfinished.

Each time any of us comes back
from the brink, what kind of triumph
is it? Is it the soul or the muscles
trained a lifetime to hold things in,
to burble and breathe under water?
And those of us who have pulled
someone back, or stood in a hallway
after the chaos has settled, how
did we find the strength to return 
again and again to this work? 
What made it possible to steady 
our voices, our hands, to open 
the purse-strings a little wider, 
a little closer to the bottom? 
We're taught love is generous. 
Or it gives without making a tally, 
doing up sums. But love is also 
the crumpled bag under the sink, 
every shred of Kleenex in the bin, 
bottles of Acetaminophen+
Caffeine, endless hours before dawn 
wondering what helped and what didn't. 
Sometimes this is called patience. 
Other times, watchfulness and waiting. 
Maybe it's the soul, unfurling damp 
wings over everything it can reach, 
or the body stretching before what 
it believes could be the last long 
stretch it can run without stopping. 
    

It settles behind your eyes

It rests its forehead against the door jamb 
and listens to the hum of laundry machines

It's the sound of a spoon 
absently circling the rim of a cup

The residue under fingernails that speaks of trying

The way branches droop even after they 
have given up their fruit

The inside of a coat pocket 
where receipts have been stuffed

The pot of mint on the sill cranes toward light
that only partially filters through blinds

Still, you want to praise it for bringing you 
back into the smallness of a moment

Not asking to witness, not speaking in tongues

Proof of how you train your body toward something 
so real it leaves an undeniable mark 

This is how the body speaks— of its thirst or hunger,
its pangs wrought by memory or a full bladder rousing you 
from sleep at 3 AM. The house breathes the way some places do, 
a kind of engine humming in the background. You walk downstairs
to the kitchen in your bare feet for a drink of ice water, then 
give in to the urge to snack on leftover dim sum from dinner 
at Jade Villa just hours ago— four round tables lined up 
to make one long one, talk mingled with the smells of leek, 
chili oil, pressed duck, and the deep orange clutch of chicken 
feet marinated in soy and jalapeno, steamed until any memory 
of them scrabbling through gravel has melted almost unctuously 
away; and one of the students who won the essay prize at school 
is shyly dipping her soup spoon into a bowl of noodles 
and the other is cheerfully and efficiently clicking 
her chopsticks from one dish to another, everyone else 
reaching in, too, for flavor. The poets on the farthest 
end of the table are laughing and the visiting scholar 
on the other end is trading jokes with the futures trader, 
and no one quite notices when the waiters come to fill 
and replenish cups of water and tea. Your colleague 
is rhapsodizing over the thick clouds of chicken and corn 
in the soup, and you give your whole mind to all of this, 
for here as in the world attention is a practice that asks 
nothing from you except to be here. When you walk back
into the night and the air is cooler and all are hugging 
and waving goodbye or someone is suggesting you find 
somewhere else to go and have margaritas, you know 
the world is waiting to slip into your mouth again— 
another kind of communion, the kind you have 
every day, the kind that stains your fingers and leaves 
a slight film of oil, even now in this kitchen where, 
standing barefoot on cold tile, already you are chewing 
on the future. You know you will be tested by one more 
terrible thing or another, just as Rilke said the purpose 
of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things— 
let's say love or unavoidable circumstance— which molds you 
and gives you the chance to do this work for which all other 
is but a preparation. Not despair, but training; the practice 
of lifting what you can, then being lifted by what you cannot. 
Days and nights feed you so you can wake and feed others, 
so you give in again, opening your mouth to say yes.

one of us sends a link to this article.
 
And when next we meet for our regular
cocktails and conversation, we share

our amusement over bowls of mussels
steamed in wine and garlic, hunks

of fresh bread on the side. At last,
recognition that women who know what

they want aren't fanged or intimidating. 
One of us says casually, between bites— 

We don't really want to train anyone 
how to be emotionally mature, or have

to explain what we want, period. And so,
if they've finally learned what we know,

well and good. We want companionship, 
a voice responding in conversation not

in grunts but thoughtfully. Someone 
who doesn't assume we'll naturally 

remember birthdays, call plumbers, doctors 
or teachers, absorb every emergency like 

a sponge. Perhaps it's true that someone
younger might now be wise enough to know

they have their own growing up to do. 
Though some of us are close to retirement

and a few have actually crossed that line, 
we are not old-old, which is important.

We're not afraid of being fully ourselves.
Tired of following protocol for its sake, 

we've arrived at our certainties, 
embrace our desire, enjoy the view.