Julie Marie Wade     Dania Beach         (Denise Duhamel)
​Out Here               For Julie A.

the air is clear the water has gone down under the bridge the same bridge that once was burning and you’ve heard the way they say the daffodils are out now and other kinds of flowers by which they mean their green stems have given rise to blossoms and you are blooming too the fist of your heart clenched so tight for so long inside you now slowly unfurling the air is clear though you may be breathing heavy your voice a slim missile of light against the vast dark landscape you wonder who can even hear you out here if anyone is even listening the stars peer back merely curious tracing your whereabouts as you once traced theirs the moon has been accused of phases too but marvels how they still say constant as the moon an orbit is not a weakness a body heavenly or otherwise is not a metaphor just think of the first time you ever wandered into the woods someone told you to hide so you ran toward the nearest thicket crouching down counting silently to yourself in the underbrush fearing at first the rustle of feet but later fearing the absence of the rustle had they forgotten you after all out of sight out of mind? the air was thick with smoke someone had been burning leaves it was late autumn and you followed the spice of the wind toward a clearing you hadnever felt so small as when you stood in the center of the open field but your lungs swelled youshouted and heard the out in it even then the way your throat became a bright flower a tulip huge and red opening in the unobstructed light of the wrong season olly olly oxen free!  it was a forecast but you didn’t know that then a rallying cry you wanted them to find you so much the daylight broad the future faraway as the riverhead or the ending of a fairy tale and when at last they came they were waving with their mittens on fingers fused into a single woolen spade you followed when they said there was a fire a wild fire they said and even then you wondered if there was any other kind tonight the air is clear the spring indisputable as dew the crisp cool newness of it which is sometimes called splendor and sometimes called terror you raise your hand like a flare you close your eyes and stutter come out come out wherever you are! you are waiting under the new moon beneath the loom of these impossible trees but we are coming I promise we are rustling our way toward you murmuring welcome! some of us rain-swept some of us wind-shook though some of us are closer than you can imagine some of us are glowing like fireflies our small light unmistakable some of us are already here
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Originally published in New Letters