Rooftops & Invitations...

It was a long day. Mostly quiet.

It was Abbey Ruins to remind me of faith. That what is true will hold through the ages. That hope springs eternal from even the rubble of what once was; that hope springs forth from the remains of what is.

And the Wild Atlantic Way to remind me to live. That storms will come, they will beat at you with wind and rain but you will stand nonetheless; you will dig your heels in and grip your hands tight and you will hold your ground as it reigns down in all it's furry...Although conversely, let's not tell my cardiologist that I did that last bit...

***

I walked across the Mizen Head Bridge- and looked out at the Atlantic Ocean- a storm blew in from the coast- I must have been a peculiar sight, standing there, no umbrella because a gust of that wind would have blown it clear across the ocean all the way back to California- no rain jacket, nor rain boots, not even a newspaper to hold over my head- just a girl standing in a ragging storm, soaked to her core, alive, and living...

We pull into Cork at half five and I am walking back to the Maldron. I know it by heart now, these streets. I fold myself seamlessly into them as if they have always been inside of me. As I am walking past a shop window, for a second I catch a glimpse of this woman, I think to myself how did I not know her all this time, this woman. She is me. And I am her. It as if I am seeing myself for the first time, strong, capable, vibrant, neither half empty, nor half full, but embracing both in these fragile hands and still standing even so. How is it that I never knew this woman existed inside of myself? But there she stands staring back at me, this woman, in the fading light of this ordinary day, and I see her so vividly, I see really see her.

***

It's half twelve and I can't sleep. The wind is howling outside, waking the Shandon Bells, they cling and clatter in disconcerting, broken chimes and it stirs up in me, this broken place, this reverie of a journey that I am still trying to understand. And so I crawl into my window as it were and I stare out over the rooftops of the city and I close my eyes- something about the day keeps rising up inside of me and so I begin to write so that I might unravel it. And perhaps knowing that it would not make sense outside of myself, I write even still, maybe for myself...


She sits in the window
Under the pale of the moon
Looking out over rooftops
And invitations of dreams
That she might have if she'd let herself sleep
But the wind in the trees blows fierce as can be
And there's a chill in her bones
And her heart's on her sleeve
Though she promised herself that she'd not feel a thing
Until the rise of the sun
To lessen the sting
But with a huff and a puff
You just might call her bluff
While the clatter of chimes from the bell up above in the sky
Plays on her melancholic reverie
And she thought to herself, for whom does it toll
In a city asleep, no lights alive to receive
And with the pull of the ropes
She's swept back through the hours
To her face soaked from the spray of the rain
As she stood by the cliffs of the sea
And watched in her way
A storm as it raged
But quiet as a church mouse must be
And it's dark in this room
And she searches herself for a secret
That she didn't know she would keep
A lock and key to a leaf on a tree
And this city built on the River Lee
And faces and names
And things she can't speak
Save for grace upon grace
Through her skin as it bleeds
And she closes her eyes
And thinks of the tide
And the shanty it softly sings
And her lips know a tune that she'd sing at the moon
Her voice trembles low
As if for the streets down below she'd would play-
Oh that I might live like the sea
Wild, unbroken and free
A love I might find if I make up my mind
To go this way or that way, whichever might be
And oh that I would love like the sea
Arms open wide to embrace what she'd find
Wherever her heart to the four corners might blow
Be it cut on a reef, or lost to the deep, a lover the same
Be it joy or it pain
Oh that I might love like the sea
Oh that I might live like the sea
Wild, unbroken, and free
And it plays at her mouth, these words that fall out
And it's all so much more than she'd dreamed
And her heart in this window beats-
Like rooftops and invitations
A sailor learning the seas
And she crawls into bed as it plays in her head
The blood and the bone
Of the life that she owns
Maybe wild
Unbroken
And free,
Rooftops
And invitations
Of this woman in the window that she didn't dream
Her heart on her sleeve
With a lock and key
To a leaf on a tree
And a city built on the River Lee
And she closes her eyes at the toll of the bells
And she knows that she knows, that she knows, she's awake to receive-
These rooftops and their invitations
Of the woman that she didn't dream
The woman that she didn't dream...

***

-Jillian Nichole, accepting the invitations...