This was the week of the whole and the holy.

The week of wine in mason jars and the tears that hit so hard I became salt water for a while and as the night grew deeper I pulled a chair into the kitchen to reach high on tip toes to search for the cigarette hidden so many months ago. The week of sitting on the patio at midnight feeling the desert heat blanket my body and pulling smoke into lungs and watching the embers burn.

This was the week the shots went down smooth and hard and the sun baked bones and I jumped in the pool and swam with all my clothes on under the light of the desert moon.

The week that both bank accounts surrendered to the pressure and flared red and overdraft charges lit up my phone, ping, ping, ping to announce just how far I am from my ideas of where I think I should be. And it is also the week that angels appeared, out of the blue, and said, “Your art, It is good. Thank you for making it. Please do not stop. And here is some money to show you I mean this.” And the week that I cried from the mercy of that.

It was the week of friends and laughter and the burn of whiskey mingled with the tart sweetness of berries and walking city streets and feeling all the way alive.

It was the week of the two step floor and the return to self that only ever happens in the center of the quick-quick-slow-slow and the way my being knows to follow the slightest pressure on back or arm without thought. It just does what bodies are meant to do and we spin and spin and spin under the neon lights.

This was the week the words returned. The week the pen began to find it’s hungry path along page and she said to me that the desert turned ocean. The week of poetry flowing liquid honey smooth, without hiding its jagged edges – like truth spilled hard into fractured light.

The week of chipped nails and carefully painted lips, the color of dark red wine and old blood and the deepest and richest of memories.

It was the week of the beginning of an unnamed reckoning, which is different than a reckoning itself, but a beginning nonetheless.

It was the week I lit the red candles and burned the black silk and opened a cigar box filled to the brim with reverence and lessons I imagined already learned returned – as they always do – to teach me more.

This was the week of cut off jeans and black spaghetti strap tanks and the lightest kimonos that trailed across my skin and danced around my legs as I walked. The week of bare feet in wet grass and honest sweat and a soft, almost impossible tenderness to self in the moments it counted most.

It was the week of standing up and rooting down and saying here I stay, at least for a little while, at least until the ground becomes firm beneath these feet of mine. The week of testing out the beginnings of a path that leads to some mysterious somewhere that might be a sort of one day home. The week of recentering and of finding the beginnings of my own knowing and naming it good.

It is the week of craving the hard asphalt of the streets and graffitied grit of a city that does not yet know me. And wanting a crowded dark and bodies against bodies against bodies and taking in the things that make the edges blur and being there, right there, and falling into an abandon that encompasses everything.

This was the week my body, finally, let go just a little. Just enough.

The week the feather and the light and the far away earth quake came to teach me of the ways we make meaning of things and what the word truth really means and to remind me why.

This is the week that the melody rose from my skin and my home filled with music again. From the time of waking until sleep – so that the week, in its own way, turned into a dance. The week of that one ‘I’m On Fire’ cover played on repeat – hundreds of times, or maybe more. Until it moved itself through me and filled the space around me and spoke to me of the way I am always wanting.

The week that we three found some measure of equilibrium, finally, in the topsy turvy that has been life. Where darkness fell and found us in the marshmallow bed, me in the center, one head on each shoulder and one of my arms wrapped around each one. Their weight against me, hearts falling in sync. The week I knew enough to name this feeling peace and grace and the reason for all.

The week we shared the near perfect rendition of Bust-a-Move together while driving to hockey. Each word delivered on time and in it’s place. And we smiled at each other as we sang and I knew in my being both the memory and experience of joy.

The week that the coffee tasted like gratitude and I conjured the ghosts and chose the terms of my own haunting.

This was the week the unfolding began.

And this was the week that I danced. Finally. All alone in that dark room, while the candles cast their shadows against the wall and the music undid something way deep inside.

This was the week that finally, I danced.