Excerpts from Mythopoeia by Shante' Sojourn Zenith

A debut prose poetry collection currently in process.

Our imagination the same substance as the inner bark of trees, the undercurrents of rivers, vast and swirling. At the corners of reality the old woods call. Something in us is not broken: for this is the story of living things and we too are alive.

Heartbeat

The metaphor of the heart and the drum runs deep through our mythology. The first drum was indeed created out of a longing to amplify the heartbeat. Two beings who loved each other found themselves one day separated…They had lived their whole lives so near to each other that each night the one could not sleep without the other’s heartbeat, and the same was true of the reverse. So when the other was taken away across the sea, the one left behind began to go mad with grief, unable to sleep without hearing the heartbeat of the other.

So, in order to function, these two beings built giant drums, loud enough to traverse the unutterable distance between them. They were so far away from one another that when it was night for the one it was day for the other. So, as the one tried to sleep, the other, across the vast distance between them, would drum out the sound of the heartbeat that their beloved missed so much. Like that, the one was able to sleep, while the other passed the day away drumming the sound of the heartbeat.

And when the one died, a child from the village was chosen to make the heartbeat everyday so that the unknowing other, far across the sea, could sleep. And when the other died, the same was true of the reverse. So to this day, across an unutterable
distance, two drums continue their mutual ebb and flow of lullaby, as a one in one village sleeps to the sound of a heartbeat on the other side of the world, while the other passes the day beating out a heartbeat on the drum.

But today, nobody remembers why.  The sound of the heartbeat from the other side of the world has become so familiar that people don’t notice it anymore. Like the sound of your own heartbeat, the heartbeat of the other while you sleep is such a part of your reality that you no longer hear it. No one remembers that it’s even there. But if one night the heartbeat were to stop, if the other on the other side of the world were forced to cease their drumming, the absence you felt would be excruciating, and you wouldn’t even know why.

Ocean

The ocean lives in a box in my room. Once, they say, there was an ocean that spread across the world. But, no more. As the years went by, we built walls around the ocean, pushing it back further and further “reclaim” a place to rest our feet. Now, when I stand outside my house, all I can see is sand, disappearing all the way to the horizon. My grandmother remembers the day they set out to demolish the ocean. They stood with their hairdryers and towels ready on the shore, prepared to dry the ocean to oblivion. My grandmother couldn’t stand this. She ran down to the edge of the water and gathered the entire ocean between the palms of her cupped hands. She poured it into a box to keep it safe. Now, at home in my room, I hold the box in my hand. From within the box, as I squeeze it tight, I feel the pulsing tides. The ocean is breathing in the box in my hand.

Forest

When I look inside I see trees. The impervious rush of branches against the contours of my tensions, green leaves shot through with light. Light slatting through the planks of my ribcage, vines climbing up my neck, enfolding my vocal cords with the shimmering hum of growing. Seeping shadows… I sigh with relief as the autumn leaves leave me for the last time, as I am covered with a comforting muffling of snow. I anxiously await the first itching of buds on my shoulders, leaves popping out from my belly button, birds landing on my rib branches to sing. Forever shivering, my boughs brush against the contours of your face, tracking the wrinkles of your memory with my rough spirals of unfettered bark. My trunk finds support in the ferocity of your embrace, your head rests against my branching roots. My bark spreads over the curves of your shoulders, down your forearms, and up your calves.  If only I could track the moments I don't have to make happen, the moments of connection that linger near me and then disappear into the darkening woods, the streaming voiceless murmur of longing calling to me through the trees, bark peeled back and raw, my hand meets the sensitive skin of the unprotected shelter of tree and the whole time I can hear myself singing. And the whole forest listens.