Embers

The following is from a Write From Your Heart monthly workshop called Cardiograms in which my alumnae students and I write to prompts related to the tone or significant features of the month. The compositions are stream of consciousness, revelatory, and unedited. This is what my pen offered up for November.

Nov. 22, 2021

When I wrote the date in my journal, the year struck me – 2021. Seems impossible, a time I never thought I’d see. Sci-Fi-ish. I recall being young – maybe a child, maybe a teen – technically a teen is still a child although I didn’t know that then –  anyway… in my youth I calculated that I’d be 42 years of age at the turn of the century and thought that was old, but figured I’d probably live to see it. Now, 21 years into the century, I’m 63, and I think: that’s young. I have so much more to do. I wonder if I’ll be able to crowd all that living into the next 20 some years.

There is a replica of a white blossom for the November image in my Georgia O’Keefe calendar. The background is coral, orange, mauve, rust like a November sunset. There are lime green leaves that are not Novemberish at all. Maybe a flower like it blooms somewhere in November, but not here in the Northeast. So, I think, what about this image evokes November? Blossoms by their very nature speak of youth and November does not. There’s a drying up, shriveling, browning and balding that happens now – a going inward, not an opening up. This blossom is wide open and white like a luminous silver-haired woman, pale and pure. She has shed her bitter skins and all that remains is her glorious essence – the smile that crinkles her cheeks and radiates from her eyes. There is an opening into her soul.

My favorite thing about November is the red maple outside my bathroom window. The once green leaves become crimson – a deep, fiery crimson – and fill the window that is framed by aqua sea glass walls. The color fills me with AH every morning. For the 21 years we’ve lived here, the tree has been there – dependable in its splendor – and for 21 years I’ve been awestruck anew. I don’t mind that it’s ablaze for a moment then those glorious reds will shrivel and fall. I don’t mind that spindly-fingered, bony crone that is steadfast through the dark months until the greening comes again. I don’t mind watching death through a window. I like the quickening that happens within when the saps recede.

There was a fire in my mind’s eye when I shut my outward eyes and focused on my breath. It was crisp, crackling with white yellow flames – a diamond light tinged with blue heat that gripped the black caverns in the coral-colored embers. It sang a high-pitched siren call. I’d say it had a haunted melody that spoke of old flames extinguished now, but no. This flame is strong. Fiercer now for being fortified by layers and layers of burnt logs, kindling, crumpled hopes and fizzled dreams. It’s an eternal flame determined to dance to whatever song the band plays next.