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We Made Cradles from Seashells

by Evan Elise

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lyrics

In our first life, just after we emerged from the cradle of civilisation and learned to walk, we met every evening on the sidewalk shore of Lake Victoria, on a night just like tonight. The sidewalk was really mud because the shores were really marshes and we approached each other like the white egrets, with expectation and discernment. Wings traversed the skyline like colorful kites and one night the first human songs were found right here, music that mimicked the bird's.

This stretch of stone was where the first handholding took place, yours and mine, fingers interlocked like sea anenomes or stars. Color existed more vividly than now, and was much less-named; the night was just as vast. We made paths across mud and bullfrog's lungs, stepping on snail shells and the sleek scales of small fish.

The first language was our language, and water was just another word for love. It was all around us.

In the morning and in the dusk, coiled in seagrass and stretched along the botfly's blue sides. Like the frogs that wait in water now, our eyes were open. What surprises us, still, is how willingly we accepted the transformation. Some might call it evolution, but we sat on these shores long enough to know. These days were our unveiling, when we walked like egrets and sat like stone. We made cradles from seashells and rocked babies with waves. We named the changing shades of water – we called them tip-toe, sky-streak, rain; North Wind, soft skin, the-first-baby blue.

As day traded places with dusk, the insects grew bolder and the birds flew lower. Our hands, though, never changed shape. They merged with mud, with sticks, with stone. They became the first village and love became the first home.

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released February 3, 2014

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Evan Elise Seattle, Washington

So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive
(Audre Lorde)

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