SWORDFERN
Rooted, I used to think.

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Purgatory - Sunday, Feb. 10, 2019
Day Fifteen - Saturday, Feb. 09, 2019
Day Fourteen - Saturday, Feb. 09, 2019
Day Thirteen - Thursday, Feb. 07, 2019
Atonement - Thursday, Feb. 07, 2019


Sunday, Jun. 26, 2005 @ 11:13 pm
Church



A woman hands Dan a folded programme and reaches to hand me another. He interrupts, It's ok, we'll share. I'd never been to church before - not real church. Weddings and Christenings and Funerals are not real church. I feel small beside 6'7" Dan and the icons of Jesus.

The service is what I expected. Ups and downs, songs and Amens. The minister preaches and my head is down, my hands are in my lap. I'm afraid they know I'm an imposter. I'm afraid that they'll know that I am here with a man who is not my boyfriend. God's eyes see through me here, transparent beneath the hewn cedar beams.

In the midst of a prayer Dan reaches over to my lap and places a hand in between my two clasped hands. It tingles. After a while he begins to draw on my hands and up my arms. I melt into the pew and the preacher's voice rises up and down in the distance. They sing with their hands in the air.

I think about yesterday. With Tim up in the mountains, I found two different orchids. I found mushrooms and the last of the first-melt wildflowers. Whiskey jacks flew around us and rested on our outstretched fingertips. Tim's face - that smile so genuine - the first time that the bird landed upon him. Those brief moments, are they enough to lighten the shadows? Shadows blacken my mind, and all I can think of is I must get out, out, out of here...

The irony lays in where I met Dan. It was at a show. I sat at a table in a dingy downtown bar waiting for Tim to pack up his guitars. I saw a guy in sunglasses and commented on the lack of sunshine. He's bliiiiiiiiind. But only in one eye.

And then months later I'm in his driveway in Sunday dress meeting his mother. You're welcome to stay for dinner. Ebony the dog begs me to scratch his bum some more. The calico cat rolls on the sidewalk, nearly wider than she is long.

Dan and I walk out the pier in White Rock. My mother has never invited someone over for dinner like that. She's got a good feeling about you. I sigh and lean into his chest. The muggy overcast June wind presses against me, but it's easy to breathe and his hand on my back is electric.









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