October 8, 2013

circling back

The drive from Georgia to New Jersey took at least 11 hours, 

but we couldn't get to sleep that night. We'd been hearing stories all week,

women on stage reading workshop journals, poets closing fists

around a microphone, others showing slideshow narratives

of life's pulverizing lessons. "This is who I am," they were saying. "This

is where I'm from," and we sat in the audience, blinking back tears.

At home at last, we fell, exhausted, into bed, but in the dark

the stories came circling back, repeating themselves like the verses 

of a new song that won't let go, and we wept again from what we'd heard,

our bodies bearing witness in the way our language never could.