Dry Your Smile (60 page)

Authors: Robin; Morgan

BOOK: Dry Your Smile

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My â¦ sister. Obsessed with discovering what is real, then preoccupied with raging against what is false,
now
are you ready? But I couldn't catch her, reach her in time to fold her in my arms before she dimmed into the river sky and vanished.

Dear Julian, dear professional, so expert at ventriloquating yourself into others' realities you have never faced your own, are
you
ready?

Dear burned-out baby star twinkling in the American dream firmament, now can you chart your splendid new constellation?

Dear coward, dear tactician, trooper, counterfeiter of the affirmations and the subterfuge, now can you concede who it was your deadliest battles were staged against?

Dear guilty sullen martyr, now can you see where you stand in the chain? What longs to be visible but is erased, what vows to survive but is converted, what yearns to hide but is displayed, what strives to contain but is broached. Hope, David, Laurence, Iliana. What preens to disguise but is exposed. Julian. And all of us were simply children once.

With every breath, we try to endure by spilling over the borders of others. Infiltrations. Occupations. Annexations.

But I refuse to believe in borders
. Borders are delusions. I affirm one planet, interdependent, unified.

Ah.
Well
then, Julian.

In the clarifying dusk, a lisianthus flower abruptly detaches itself from its stem, unfurls white organdy appliquÃ©d wings, and flits to the Crimson Glory, then circles my head once and shimmers off. Blossom or butterfly? Artifice or art? By the eclipsing light I can barely make out the title of the book the child has given me:
Dry Your Smile
.

“Too late,” I laugh aloud, and can taste in my laughter the smart of salt washing my face. “It was Kafkaâin the book Momma gave me when I was only tenâwho wrote The catastrophe we fear has already occurred.' Momma gave me. Momma. Too late, too late,” I laugh.

The sun surrenders its splendor to the horizon. Unafraid of me now, the finches and sparrows return to their feeder, alighting upwinged, innocent, in victory silhouettes. A frond of wisteria, wind-detached from the trellis, waves, reaching for me unthreateningly. The dwarf Japanese maple settles into evening, dowager in her burnt-sienna lace. Each of the succulents is something else: an emerald rose, Zen pebbles; one cactus sports a bishop's mitre, another postures itself a Doric column draped in ermine. Somewhere, the chameleon who lives among the cactus pots is blatantly invisible. The begonia and the willowy freesia belie their squat bulbous origins. A first evening star winksâfrom the past, where it novaed long ago?

At the edge of the day, at the edge of the stage, at the edge of the grave, at the edge of the self, at the edge of the world.

Oh, exquisite theater of the universe, trickster, illusionist, there is nothing you cannot perform. Dear Blue Planet, theater in the round, dear Life, play-within-a-play. Give me to know that I am blessed by being rooted so firmly in my unreality as to now dare celebrate the self who never was and ever shall be, world without end, amen.

I know now that I need not worry how to finish it. I would goâdefiant, laughing, freely celebrating what I will never understand, to build a fire in the fireplace, right in the middle of summerâand burn the manuscript, page by lying, truthful page.

If there were such pages. If a manuscript had ever existed.

I know, too, smile streaming with tears, that I need no longer worry about writing this particular book. We are free of each other, it and I, forgiven, at peace.

There is no reason now to write it at all.

The miracle we seek has already transformed us
.

About the Author

Award-winning poet, novelist, journalist, and feminist leader Robin Morgan has published more than twenty books, including the now-classic anthologies
Sisterhood Is Powerful
and
Sisterhood Is Global
and the bestselling
The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism
. Her work has been translated into thirteen languages, among them Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Persian. A recipient of honors including a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, and former editor in chief of
Ms
., Morgan founded the Sisterhood Is Global Institute, and with Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem, cofounded the Women's Media Center. She writes and hosts
Women's Media Center Live with Robin Morgan
, a weekly program with a global audience on iTunes and WMCLive.comâher commentaries legendary, her guests ranging from grassroots activists to Christiane Amanpour, Anita Hill, and President Jimmy Carter.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Mauricio DÃaz

ISBN: 978-1-5040-3910-9

This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

180 Maiden Lane

New York, NY 10038

www.openroadmedia.com