Mindy Nettifee: There Is a Song Of My Being, Singing the Song of Me

I.
The wake-up calls have started piling up.

Look, this one about the geo-political implications of my daily life has been sandwiched between several alarming realizations about the state of women's welfare and a spiritual lecture about strengthening the muscle of the heart. There's a stack about how white life has flourished at the expense of black and brown life, how comfort and joy themselves have been tools of the dark. There's a stack about the consequences of believing I was not my body, that my body was an object I could master or ignore; a stack illuminating how little I know about who little I know, right now.

There's more arriving every day. I awaken each morning only to continue awakening. Shedding shades for glass. Alicing.

My eyes have gone Cassandra wide, James Baldwin wide. 
Tearing in the winds of this new understanding that history is not about the past. History is alive now, a cumulative animal, barreling down. 

II.
There is a song of my being, singing the song of me.
There is a note vibrating from every cell in my body. My ass, my  bones: percussion. My kidneys: the horn section. My liver: an anger of trumpets. My nervous system: strings violining and celloing. My gut: the bass. My spleen is strangely the conductor.

My feet are soloists. My hands are not soloists. 

My lungs play weather systems, moving my emotions like clouds. I am my own atmosphere.

My heart is the loudest instrument. She doesn't always play, but when she plays, every other part of me becomes a back-up singer.

My heart loves the line, there is a song of my being, singing the song of me.

My voice will still channel all the instruments of my body without my heart singing, but you would know.

The song of me is always changing. One minute it's the longing song. The next, the unexplained joy song. The unbearable grief song. The feet in the ocean song. The making butternut squash soup song. The go ahead and leave him song. The betrayed song. The throwing things in the fire song. The I am with the women song.

It's hard to believe now, but for a long time, I wasn't even listening.

I was fast asleep.

— Mindy Nettifee

"The Song of the Rooster"

From Open Your Mouth Like a Bell