I MEANT TO TELL YOU TO DANCE - sara williams



I meant to tell you that I’m broken between sheets and cans of crayons, the law between hums. Listen. The tiger hums, sluts it up and sighs. Listen. You’re running on empty and listing evolutionary details that won’t quit hammering some survival scream. Bleach the soles of your feet. That’s what I did. Now I’m clever as Jesus, humming a tune, walking above water, absorbing the earth, my tongue long and slick with limitless bees warm as yellow, yet beaten down. Now we’re sailing bucolic heights. Listen. I’ve got to tell you. I’ve a dance that crawled beneath the alligator’s claw to make slits in her dress. I’ve a dance that slipped past a disaster into milk and bees, into directions home. I’ve a dance that built the sky from echoes and scars. The sacred is unraveling. The crawlspace opens silk ropes into a tidy knot, the brilliance and sweat of a trance, a railing backwards like the stunned babes of cows. The sacred is unraveling now. Like a light I can’t process even as I dance to the blossomed terrace and ache through the twisted groundlessness of desire. Bells wake up tragedy and the dance leans into a star, a new name. The name is cross-eyed lady and we’re crawling beneath arrows, sucking earth into our gums.