“I danced myself right out the womb.” My mother’s white daffodils bloomed the morning I was born – May Day – in the year of George Orwell. This morning I took a shower and then put on dirty socks. My earliest memory of my sister is speaking to her through my mother’s belly button while she was still in my mother’s womb. I could recite the alphabet when I was two, but I was three before I could say it backwards. I have four scars on my face from when I have fallen. There is no war worse than a civil war. Who I am constantly battles who I want to be.
“Is it strange I danced so soon?” Intermezzo in A Major moves me so that whenever I play it on the piano or listen to it, I can’t help but wonder who Johannes Brahms was thinking of when he composed it. My favorite songs should only be sung at night, with the lights turned down low. If I were a piano, I don’t think I’d fear anything.
Abstractions distract me. I keep a collection of euphemisms but never use them. I am a fork most compatible with knives and socks. I wish James and Beau were still alive. When I was younger, I thought Jesus lived and died in Rhode Island because of the waterfront towns Galilee, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem. Gardenias remind me of my First Communion. I was eight the first time I looked at my vagina. “I was dancing when I was eight. Is it strange to dance so late?”
When I was twelve years old, I was wearing ties courtesy of Annie Hall and wanting to be a writer because of Carrie Fisher. “I was dancing when I was twelve.” I prefer Pinot Noir. And Film Noir. I like to write quotation marks around certain words in newspaper headlines. I’m in an ocean state of mind. “What’s it like to be a loon? I liken it to a balloon.”
My first full memory of my mother is of her holding me. I was almost five and mostly unconscious in a post-operation recovery room. I had exotropia; my eye muscles occasionally pulled my eye out of alignment. “You had your IV still in your arm and you had three electrodes on your chest. The nurse let me hold you because you were crying and calling for Mommy. I held you and gave you oxygen and you began to relax.” (“And then again once more”)
When I was six, I created my alter-ego, Smachel. I blamed all my misbehaviors on her. The first song I fell in love with was “Eternal Flame” by The Bangles. My favorite word is “embargo”. Backwards it spells “O grab me.” I hope I will have a greater impact of the world than plastic. I was on earth a decade before I realized I would one day leave it. “Is it wrong to understand the fear that dwells inside a man?”
And on those days when I don’t want to get out of bed, I think of my great-grandparents and the gift they gave me. Whatever I’ll meet when I wake up cannot compare to a three-month oceanic journey on coffin ships to a foreign land. Only three of them were alive when I have been, but they are all real. I am wise beyond my height.
Cosmic Dancer by Rachel J. Smith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
