Before

by Karen Salyer McElmurray

Before the year alone and snow that piled up and up. Before the ocean and running miles until my legs were strong. Before the man I love who came to me in the dark, smelling of burning sage. Before the page after page that reaches far inside. Before the ordinary holiness of now. Before the strength of my own two hands. Before and before. Before the man I wanted so much in between quarrels that left me stunned. Before the nights of drinking and how he played his Spanish guitar until he was drenched with sweat. Before the bruises on my legs from sleeping and waking and again and again, and how that man and I spent the morning in bed, listening to birds outside the window and reading aloud from stories about faith. Before the writer who was a hunter who said my sentences were beautiful and the table in the kitchen where he had once skinned a deer. Before the books I took seriously, and the poems that saved me but still left me lonely. Before the dance floor with lights. Before the telephone bar and the poet friends and that one writer who took my breath. Before the alleyway. Before the bathroom stall. Before the bed in the historic mansion. Before. Before the journey around the world with that man, before the jobs and jobs to fund the miles and miles, before our fingers pulled fruit from vines and the packets we stuffed with towels at the factory, before our hands forgot one another and he was gone. Before that broken heart and a man named Bob who gave me tea and then pushed me down on the beige carpet while I cried. Before the explosion of stars and sex and acid in a faraway canyon with a brown-eyed man I left behind. Before the bar with a volcano and waitresses in togas and sex after a million Manhattans and all the sweet cherries. Before dreaming there was more. Before the man named Peter who gave me a long stemmed glass and must have liked it, fucking a hippie girl who’d never tasted good wine. Before and before. Before the child I gave away pushed his way out, leaving the tilt of my womb and my heart spilled into my own two hands. Before last call at that bar in Jett, the lounge with the same band for five years running and the man with in a black suit who bought me whiskey after whiskey, disappointed that I left, back to the trailer and the husband who was seventeen who rolled onto me and pushed inside me in his sleep, one quick minute in the spinning world. Before that first time, parking in the thicket beside the country road and how it didn’t feel, penis pushing between my legs, the surprise of nothing, and then another car with its bright lights and the hurrying, hurrying. Before the book about Theodora, the empress who was a courtesan, before the book about the scarlet letter and not knowing why, before book after book and the burning between my legs, in my gut, all the places burning with a want I didn’t know how to name. Before the two of them standing in the hall, my mother in her torn cotton panties, her arms across her small, bare breasts and my father in his work pants and an undershirt stained with engine oil. Before that. Before standing in the crib and the room and the morning voice of the father, him lithe and young and strutting toward the door, something out from his body shiny with what I will later know is not my mother’s want. Before the hand lit with fire that touched me awake, before my first quick breath. Before I was born. Before the beauty of the moon and all description fails. Before a kiss could ever be enough. Before anything at all. Before desire was a word.