Magic

Once a year I have a one-hour appointment with my neurologist.

I have roped my jeweled heart into a robin's head.  My tongue is made of feathers.  This new year, the crow says, is going to be beautiful, because we will make it so.  Did I tell you I am afraid I will fail?  Loud-mouthed bluejay, stealing all the pretty birds' songs, calling my thief's tongue a ruby crown.

My appointment is at 8 in the morning.  The sky is only beginning to tumble pink into the treetops when I arrive.  It is January 4th of the year we are new; the year we  begin to say, I am beautiful.

Near the end of my appointment, my doctor asks me a long question, which runs like this:
I don't want to offend you, but [....] The way you describe how your mind works is unusual.  It can get you into trouble; most people don't think the way you do. [...]I believe that your decisions may be right for you.  There are some places I couldn't follow you because I don't know what presumptions you made to get from one place to another.  If this were a conversation at a bar, I'd ask you about those presumtions, and if I were your best friend I would already know what they are.  Like I said, most people don't think like you, and the way you are talking today is different from how you've ever spoken to me before [....] Now let me finish where I was going with that thought [....] I'm not questioning the changes [...] I mention it because amphetamines can change the way your mind works [....] It doesn't sound to me like the amphetamines have anything to do with it, but I have to consider the possibility.  [....] I hope I didn't insult you.

Insulted?  I am elated.  I made the changes.

A year ago, I began to change.  My heart and mind were not what I believed in.  I had said, I cannot give you what you ask of me in friendship.  I don't know how to do it.  But that was not true.  Cannot is a strange way of lying with words.  To think clearly, I have to change it to will not, because I am alive.  But when I took responsibility for these words, they became this:
I will not give you what you ask of me in friendship.  I will not learn how to do it.

That was not good enough.  So I changed my answer; I erased two nots.
I will give my love in friendship.  I will learn how to do it.

And that was the beginning.  One thing I would not say or believe and so I changed it.  Because we can learn and change, and have wills.  New questions appeared, shouted at me.  What is the difference between the person who believes she can do anything, and the person who does not believe?  What if it is the belief itself?  What if this is the only thing?

I pretended it would work.  It would be true, because I would make it true.  Some days this seems small, and others it is everything.  The days I am new are better: the days I cry on a bus, reading Edna St. Vincent Millay explain that her heart is a daft bird, charging the storm and making her nest in the shadow of the hawk.

And in the dark I have worried every choice thin.  And still, I am new.  Still, I unbutton in the dawn, tumble out of my nest into its quick, chill arms and sing.  Still a sunrise breaks open my chest.  I am unappeasable, daft; I will charge storms.  When I am blind to obstacles, they no longer exist.   I am new because I have said so, and I will not stop.  You are beautiful and I will learn to say how I am stitched up the wrists with the velvet ache of you.

You.  Friend.  Father, mother, uncle, aunt.  Love.  New stranger on the sidewalk.  I am in a daze.  I am alive.  I am thrown to the ground on a pair of eyes, confusing the skin with apricots, my tongue with the feathers tied into your hair.  When the wales open across your legs, my wrists hurt.  It is okay; I will tell you that you are beautiful.

It is true about us.  We are who and what we believe, if we choose to be so.  Or, if you wish:
The empricial change was sufficient to raise the question of its origin, and my doctor was ethically obligated to ask.  I am not offended.  It was the highest compliment, and I did not go looking for it.  You surprised me with this question, Dr. Stolz.

I bluffed, and now it's true!  I like this.  I think I will see where I take myself with it.

Have I repeated and fluttered about?  Words will fall away in time: I will learn how to edit and make neat, organized paragraphs.  Words are not so easy with me yet, and that is alright.  It is okay to go on.  It is okay to dump words of love out windows, keep each other up at night with them, spill a few too many about.  Here, I will try for a middle ground.

One more thing, then.  This:

SandmanMoon.  You are my friend, and you have my love, without qualification.  This has always been the only honest answer.  You said that other people, too, need to know it can be done.  It is possible to grasp everything we love, reach upward, and surface, carrying the whole treasure of our hearts.  Possession can be broken, it is possible to love one another, all of us, and there is no measure: love is not stolen or cheated, one from the other.    You are right.  This is not a message to be tucked away in secret.  It is hard to trust myself, and I must learn to do it.  I am no longer angry that people did not understand.  They were worried.  And they, too, need to know that we succeeded.  That we found the in the same parts of ourselves that got them to worrying about us, answers.  Being alive is dangerous, we tangle up in people.  And this is right for me.  It is more important for me to love, for no good reason, to give myself in every action and word; the moment this choice is made, everything changes.  It is not just true about wedding rings, about husbands, wives and children.  I wrote to you, I said,
I will love.  The open, jeweled heart is scarce. We have kept ours.

And that is no small thing.  We made it up ourselves; neither is that so small or common.

All of that you already know, SandmanMoon.  I have said it, safe near you; or you have said to me.  It is time I put those words where other people can see them, as we had hoped to find them in the mouths of others and did not.  Say what I believe openly, as you have done.  The poetry book cradled in the corner of a bookshelf lining the eaves and fingertips with such discoveries, plucking at the frightened heart, was only abstract until I launched myself into the sky and made it true.  Other people will see, and that, too, is more than it seems.
 
Thank you, SandmanMoon.  Thank you for every word you have placed beside me, for every moment of your life that you have shared with me.  You have helped me become a different person, one that I love.  I do not think there is more that one could ask for, from anyone.