Christina Murdock
I have wasted time like tissue paper.
So many nights, I made it to morning still
blaming myself for how you came to exist,
how I did nothing to prevent you, how I should have
known. I have sat on a clover hill overlooking the sea,
felt the static blue charge into white caps, deep swells,
and I know now that storms begin
in the depths not the skies.
I should be done letting you swell and fester.
To the other woman:
I am still angry years later
and do not know how to let it all go.
From this hillside, I have seen
the staggered rocks below. It rains every morning here,
but the ocean starts first--
slaps the cliffs with an open palm and curls over, taking what it can into its fist:
earth, rusty pitchforks, a few goats. This is when the sea floods
into the sky and everything beyond the cliff is some fluid deviation of gray.
I can't understand how the goats don't sense the change
in the ocean, the salt sweat on the cliff grass--
why they don't know how far it can reach,
how far back in the field they should stay.
Anyone walking along the path closest to the edge,
behind the farmers' hand-made walls--the path here
a foot wide and a hundred feet high over the sea,
would feel the spray and sense how easily
the momentum can build, reach up and crush.
I remember red signs in English and Portuguese
warning tourists away from the cliffs,
the farmers' fields. I have blatantly ignored every one.
I was never afraid of the cliff giving way, being swept out to sea.
I am afraid of you.
I am afraid of how men leave
so that I never see it coming. I am
afraid of not being able to sense
you just offshore and gaining momentum,
the change in atmospheric pressure--
barometer rising, then falling.
Dead pools of fish and waves that are never fully fed.
I can't keep doing this.
Certain days, just before a storm,
the winds would push in hard enough from the east,
so that I could jump off the cliff
and get pushed back on the path,
like the wind was the one who didn't want me to fall,
like the wind was the one with the final decision--
when and where.
If or why.
I have jumped off a cliff, trusted that the wind
would keep blowing, wouldn't suddenly change direction.
I could be talked into doing it again.
My hands open toward
the cliff
the goats
the farmers
the east wind
the red red warning signs
the silver water
the salt.
Palms up, fingers spread:
I hold nothing for the sea to take.
Copyright (c) 2006 by Christina Murdock
Christina Murdock lives in Pittsburgh. She graduated from the Universityy of Pittsburgh with a degree in English Writing and Film Studies. Her work has appeared in The 10th Floor Review, Collision, and Pittsburgh City Paper. She has also been a featured guest on WYEP-91.3FM's show featuring the work of poets and writers, Prosody, and participates in the Madwomen in the Attic poetry writing workshop at Carlow University. Podcast of her July, 2006 show is available at http://www.wyep.org/music_programs/podcasts.asp.