Blue Notebook

8:50 p.m.

I set the radio dial to Max Richter.

In front of me lies a light blue notebook that aches for my touch after twenty years of neglect. Lying still, it faces me, latent sheets, pages frail, in it, the mysterious old contents and trapped feelings of a lonely teenage girl.

I start the fire, dim the lights, and sink down low into an old yellow chair. The fabric is faded and matches the color of some four hundred flames raging upwards despite me. Can I merge with this fire? I imagine, then stop—Oh,

the alchemical significance of this ask.

Bare toes on the hearth, rocking through time. The chair is sturdy, holding me close and cradling me tight while birchwood burns and

oak from a tree

fills the room;

a vacancy stirred;

it moistens the air and soothes my racing mind.

The imaginal before me. Go ahead…

I breathe. I breathe in as he breathes out, and I wait.

I do it again.

A stomach flip and a swirl, some force, deep, and it sharpens—a soft blanket on softer skin. My eyes are closed.

Crackling wood atop an ash-filled hearth, pops and snaps, hurriedly outpacing a softer sound that melts like wax from the speakers behind me.

My heart is at rest, but this fire is on fire. Ablaze with emotion and ready to run from the bottom of a well where I bolted the doors so long ago. Curiosity abounds, abandoned yet still, a tender mind paces and asks—reserved, "Is she ready?" Oh!

She interrupts with haste, for she is further than ready. Not pleading or imploring like she did before but roused with delight to dance for me. I slouch down low and peer into the abyss as I did before. 

I can see her—

I couldn't before

It was black before and pierced my ears with shrieks and screams of bats and beasts so ancient in time, sick and imprisoned with souls of the deceased. Wanton and weary with an illness that creeps

and seeps through desolate walls,

confining

my mind.

Knotted dark hair,

heavily

draped

over robes

of

now,

a white cotton gown, dirty with ash from the taunts of her past. In Purgatory, I think, clawing her way out from the ridicule and scorn of being mocked and tormented and teased.

It is lighter now.

A spotlight shines on her now, a spotlight held by me. Dance for me.

She dances and twirls,

dressed in white in the center of the light, inhaling the breath I breathe out.

That rustic smell of burning wood

emanates

all

around,

Now,

Northwoods, a cabin?

Deep in the center of the vast

outdoors

Like cedar

in a brand-new dresser drawer

Burning atop once

impenetrable logs

of

Now,

lighter grey cinder?

a smoky ash, once jagged now blackened, encasing the walls, where rows upon rows

of rain and winter

soften

A solo artist defining perfection, she has brought to perfection

a dance with one, exquisitely done

in all these years of suffering as one,

silent screams and bleeding from the eyes—suffering,

undone.

Her hair is now sleek behind her ears; eyes are closed, delicate and sheer, amethyst and crimson on pale white lids, silky nude limbs rising above

amid the dust

settling above her

falling like snow, on lace,

in the winter.

She feels the music. It is in her 

The music is in her

Some haunted Spirit with nowhere to go

so possessed her with rage and took hold of her so, embracing, enrapturing, embodying her slow, with a violent unwillingness to let go

now this pale pink flesh at the bottom of a well who dances below

in cotton ball clouds of stark white snow

by some new light,

a light in the well, no?

a glow,

casting a shadow, a sight I can see

a silhouette twirls

What is she d—

She is dancing with her shadow.

It spins and makes wind as the music moves—

and all of their breaths

they soar midair, chilled by the touch of the morning dew

and steam on the wind

one voice—

covered in ice

with ease and grace, some sparrow

it cuts the ice—

a hallowing voice echoes

and permeates through

her eyes are closed

her arms above, move—

she is moving the song

moving along with the poised light touch

of

every piano key.

A sight to see. 

The music has become her; she has become the song. 

This pale pink body,

moving with time, refined. 

Pale pink elegance, mirrored and gold, like sparkling ice

a symphony of songs.

An orchestra of one,

some opaque thoughts, now clear as the dawn

once craving this song to be seen at all.

Shall we begin?

Yes, oh yes,

She breathes in.    

—Nicole Brooks