I have met the love of my life, the girl of my dreams, and my soulmate.
They are three different women.
My love burned out my eyes as I watched her fall
I wandered, hands outstretched, in search of her in the country of jagged glass
Our greetings no longer Amiable, our stares strange,
I still remember the sweet blood on my cut hands, some of it was mine.
Another I met in an afternoon vision, folded note slipped sideways past my ribs,
Warning me of a red fire boiling in from the east.
My men barely had time to lash me to the mast
The last knot snug just as the golden voice rained aching over my heart.
I remained ever an island to her, she a sunset strangely settling in the east again.
A span of time and circumstances cut between us and I fear I cannot Bridge it.
My soulmate stirred beside me in sleep when our names were the alternating beats on a drumskin stretched between the teeth of gods hunkered in secret parley until one sneezed and one laughed and the skin snapped, a canvas whipping in the wind, paint crying over the map of all the child-smudged continents from where they would send for our varied parts only to scatter them over and over from the cliffs of the moon down to clay-slick river valleys where red monkeys sift the water for the syllables of the incantation that will make us whole.
Her voice is the sea foam call Beckoning Again from the cave where fire children raise pinky fingers to write messages in mercury. For her I will always answer, will always fly and fall, shudder and be still.
The three will never weave me a skein of promises, a blanket under which I can sleep untroubled
The three will never confer and trade secrets
The three will never compare their familiar bruises
But when they cry out from each horizon they are a chorus and their song finds a common center
They are the Sisters of the Storm and my oceans boil when they draw near.