Dancing Whole

When I was seven, thinking I was pleasing
my mother and God (in that order), I danced
at the communion rail, fingerpainting air,
my kid knees composing primordial poems
against the kneeling bench.

In the parking lot after Mass, she stopped me with a slap:
never embarrass me like that again, she said.
Of course, she was right, and I had been wrong
(which was usually the case),
so I folded my stinging face
into the envelope of my body, posted the pain
with a forever stamp, mailed it to forgotten.

Past seventy now with arthritic joints and neuralgia
in my face, I tell my analyst about that long-ago ballet
for which my mother clapped against my cheek
a hapless applause.

The undelivered letter opens;
story mixes again with unsealed pain, jolting,
like old lavender blended with blood’s steely tinge,
filling the vast space between us, me at home,
my analyst in Zurich, sitting across a virtual table.

Healing rarely comes alone. It needs a hand to hold,
someone to hear the cry that was uncried,
to say the name with love once unsaid with love,
to breathe in my pain, breathe out abiding presence.

Today, as I run my thoughts along the polished scar
that marks the knit of memory and hurt,
my girl voice calls me again to come
before a beaming God who cocks one
eyebrow and asks me ever,
Dance?

-Kitty Yanson