Firewalk 

I

The witch in the blue hockey bus. She of the round tarot cards, the friendly insults over backgammon, tea poured from the bill of a porcelain duck.

Carol, with her broad open face, piercing blue eyes, and the long wiry black hair she sat on, now, across the tiny table from me. “You should come. It’s transformative,” she said, eyes dancing. I needed transforming, sure, but fire is known to burn skin.

The bus smelled of smoke: one small log smoldered in the iron potbelly made for coal. It smelled, too, of sage: drying suspended near the emergency exit, burnt for smudge. Burnt for clearing, for purifying.

“No,” she said. “I’ve never been burned. Nobody I’ve ever walked with has been burned. It raises your energy. You need this—you need to at least see this. Just come watch.”

II

bodies singing

drumming

warm warm warm in the tiny wooden chapel

windows open to dewy air

candle flames dancing in the cross draft

dark settles rolling valley 

into one depthless plane

energy builds

humming the room

filling my ears

pounding my heart

my heart wanting wanting wanting

to be filled

 – o heart, be ears

allow

allow

listen

listen

hear

hear, heart

under it all

the center of it all

breath 

—my breath—

pulling in air

warm air

air warm from others’ lungs

air prepared by their songs

to flow its way to lungs—my lungs!

and out again

my song to their song

their song to mine

to ours

to our song

to our breath

live shadows dancing the walls

live voices ringing fir rafters

rough-hewn, 

holding up

this skin of ours

this us

pulsing in this place

this breath

this thinning of the membrane

drumbeat of

self other self other self other

echoing from wall to wall to wall

III

Susan’s voice: “raise this cone of light, from deep under your feet—our feet—up into the sky. Raise it in your mind as you raise your voice to sing.”

The drumbeats quickened, quickened, quickened until they were one continuous stream of sound and I opened my throat, pushing out the song—pushing the song back out into everyone’s song that they were pushing out and it rose rose rose, our song, through the roof and up up up and the drums stopped. We stopped, and someone opened the door.

The song began again as we walked out, one by one, in our bare feet into the grassy mud, the muddy grass, the full night, and up the hill, one by one and all together: footfall, drumbeat, song, toward the fire.

The fire! 

Five hours of burning now settled into gentle flame, lapping up lightly from the coals. Michael and Penny, raking the coals out from the center, spreading them to the edge of the circle where the line of us snaked around, around, at widdershins, bare feet on dew-cold grass circling this vast bed of winking crackling orange black coals. 

Here.

Here they would walk, the other links in the singing chain, and I would watch.

We moved around, around in the song and the drumbeat—round drum, round movement. I sang and thought and thought and thought and felt. Felt the long grip of years that tore and kept me other. I had always been apart. Would always be apart. The family. The group. The club. The team. Always outside, outside, outside, apart. 

The wailing in me came out into the song, ripped out and was absorbed into the stream of sound and motion, absorbed by the people in the circle, absorbed by the one being we all, at that very moment, were.

Could I?

Could I set down the terrible burden of being apart, free my hands to reach for theirs? Theirs, whose voices were wrapped in mine and mine in theirs?

Heart, o heart—how it wanted this with every straining fiber of its pounding pounding pounding being!

IV

The drummer laid her instrument on a blanket in the grass and returned to the circle, reached for hands. All hands connected, circled around the fire’s last tiny yellow flames licking up from the coals. The song, the song. The song continued. Feet, all our feet, planted in this thin slip of almost-mud. Hands, all our hands, joined one in one, one in one. Voices, all joined swirling in the center of our circle. Our circle.

My heart, though. Separate as always. Straining toward connection, despairing of connection. Not for me. For others—for them, always. Never for me.

Face warm from the fire, hands warmed by the hands holding them, I stood. Sang through tears as I’d always done. Apart, still: never a part.

A break opened in the circle as someone dropped the hands she’d held and stepped in, walked across the circle, across the fire. 

Across the fire! 

The hands that had held hers reached for each other, and two hands across the circle released each other to welcome hers as she stepped onto the ground, onto the grass, out of the fire.

Then another walker dropped hands, and another, and another. Two met in the center and embraced. Hands released and feet walked across the fire, bringing hands to hold new hands. 

The song—always the song, our song—carried by those not laughing, those not whooping with joy. We carried it on our breath, breathed it in, breathed it out. 

I carried that song as my hands released and my feet found fire,  fire, fire, then grass, as my hands found new hands. As my hands found new hands, same hands, my hands, our hands. 

As I found myself, finally, a part.