Wednesday, Day 46: Bones

Ascension Dream

The bones of all my dead
gather at the top of the mountain
in Manganiti, among the graves.

It doesn’t matter who they are,
where they lived, where
they were actually buried:

in this dream, they link hands
to dance like the Souliotes
choosing death over
enslavement. Except, of course,

they are already dead. And not
only that: they’re hard to tell apart,
unsturdy without muscles
and flesh. They dance

past Katina’s kafenio,
past my Theo Foti’s place,
past the old schoolhouse
with its rusty playground,
down toward the old beach
where nobody goes anymore.

I link hands with whoever
is on the end, but when we get to the sea,
I let go, afraid they’ll lift me with them
as they rise into the distance.

Instead, they stop dancing and climb
one by one to the top of the big rock
that juts out of the cliff.
As they leap into the sea,
their bones come apart, then float
one by one into the deep.

“Why isn’t this sad?” I ask
my three living aunts,
who have shown up just in time
to see the end of the show.

They laugh. "Ascension
is about undoing,”

one of them says.

"Don't you know that
by now?

“About returning,”
says the second.

“About letting go,”
says the third.

When they wade into the water,
I cry out, “I don’t want to lose you,
too!" They just turn and laugh at me.

"What's the matter with you?
We’re just taking a swim.
The water's warm today.
Come with us.”