This Particular Happiness by Jackie Shannon Hollis

Author:Jackie Shannon Hollis [Hollis, Jackie Shannon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Forest Avenue Press
Published: 2019-07-30T16:00:00+00:00

Around me, men, women, young and old sat in chairs, facing each other. Knees close, hands in laps. My partner for this exercise, a woman a few years older, sat across from me. “Look at each other,” the leaders had said. “Don’t speak.” I looked at her face. Her nose was uneven. Her eyes were blue. Her eyes. On mine. I breathed. I worried what she would see, my big pores, stray hair on my eyebrows, acne scars on my cheeks. “Stay with it,” the leaders said. “Let your partner see you. See them.”

The flight in my stomach, my chest.

Her eyes. Something there. She wasn’t her face. I wasn’t mine. I was more. She was more.

“Now one of you begin speaking. But say something new. Something you’ve never told anyone before.”

“This is hard for me,” I said. “To just sit. To not talk. To look at you and have you look at me.”

“I know,” she said. “But when I look at you, I see beauty. I see hurt. I see strength.”

This was new. This was scary. I wanted more.

I didn’t think I could dance. They put on music, the Pointer Sisters singing “Jump,” and they said, “Dance like your life depends on it.” I danced. It didn’t matter if I was good.

It was as though I’d been stirred from a long sleep where I’d been dreaming a dream of someone else’s life. I woke from that other person’s dream knowing I wanted something different.

They made a line of people, and I could decide who came close, and who didn’t, choose which person I hugged and which I didn’t. I wrapped my arms around almost all.

Like soil long-parched by sun, each new thing was fresh rain, sinking into cracks and crevices.

Live as if death is on your left shoulder, they said.

This sat me up, and I moved toward these words.

This isn’t a dress rehearsal, they said.

Like from water and sun, that seed of knowing, planted and buried four years earlier in the dangerous morning hours with a stranger, grew to life. How easy it is to die. The urgency to be present, take in each moment. Be alive.

All the possibilities for me to choose were open. I wanted more. I wanted different from what I had.

But how would I know I was choosing right?

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