an adventure in leaving: the spilling room

The Spilling Room.

No heartmonster can go in this room alone.  They go in pairs.  Usually holding hands.  Sometimes the room is deep blue with black and turquoise swirls.  Or sometimes variants of purple.  There’s a couch or a cozy pillowed and blanketed corner. 

They sit.  They touch.  Left thigh to right thigh.  Hand in hand. 

One goes at a time.

With words and tears and images and direct memory transferred across the spilling lines, he shares….whatever memory or experience needs sharing and full knowing.  Yes, the spilling room catches all that is stored in our livers, our bones.  If and when a heartmonster so chooses, he can spill it to another: all color, sensation, all vividness, all hurt.  And even the pieces he doesn’t remember.  So he doesn’t have to remember it alone.

And once it is spilled, it’s spilled.  It’s done.  As fully as the other heartmonster knows the direct sensation, memory, feeling of that moment, once they disconnect – left thigh away from right, hands no longer held- it’s gone.  It’s not his.

And so the heartmonsters look at each other.  Deep doe eyes as all heartmonsters have.  And without even knowing the extent of what was spilled anymore, they love each other a tad more wildly and a tid more wholly than they could have before.

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“In love with everything,” she said.  “Completely.”

And she meant it.  In a state of some stun.  No words to draw pictures of her meaning. 

“Spilling room?” he asked.  

She squeezed his hands and so they went there together. 

Together they sat.  On a little couch.  The kind you might find at any grandparents’ house.  Together they sat.  Left thigh pressed to right thigh.  Hands loosely held.  Staring ahead.  Some flowered wallpaper of light pinks and browns before them.  A carpet of rug beneath their feet.

It started slowly, the spilling.  A deep breath from the cavern of her belly, filling his as it rose up in her chest.  Another.  Another.  Breath as a necessity for the “in love with everything.”

She glanced at him and said, “I never considered myself to have a very open heart.  Full and whole, strong even, yes, but open?  Well, it was never so much always closed as left ajar or swinging open only to slam.  I’ve been careful.  Worn spike suits.  Kept my eyes to myself.  Shouted so loud out my skin STAY.AWAY.FROM.ME too many times to count.”

And then the spilling started in full.  Room spinning.  A whoosh of noise.  Two Russian accents heard among eggplant frying.  Fifty smiling, dancing faces swirling and passing her from heart to heart.  Hands to hands.  “Land down under,” sung through speakers, four.  Spun by a Jesus and a Brian, flown down to the floor.  A stumbling upwards, a hand on her back.  Standing in the center of a circle.  A “never forget.  Never forget.  The force of bone and stone and phoning home” inside her.  Hips to floor and faces beaming back her "YES, YES," for a dry swept land.  Full of wombats, quolls, birds bright and best friends.

He closed his eyes and let the spins take him.  Felt dozens of arms wrap around him.  Heard all the words of

I love you.

You are safe.

We love you.

Fly, Little Bird, fly.

Felt the warmth of hands to skin.  Of a gift given every day for four from a lover loved through letters and words.  He pressed his feet down to the ground and let in the dance of curls, blonde, candles as light.  Lyrically, she moved.  Best friend dancing her goodbye.  A series of movements for her to take, to carry, in case of any darker times in the land down under, land of wise.

He spoke her “YES!”  Her “YES!” to listening.  To letting go of her most beloved things so she could go.  A thing – a person, a place.  Something known and loved.

And she just sat still and let the image, memory, and feeling flow.  A dreaming friend hugged goodbye three times on a porch.  Small bathtub with two bodies.  Kisses on her cheek.  Three friends dancing till they are 80, a pact made.  She spilled all into him so he could know: in love with everything.  Open hearted.  And letters sent from other states.  Truffula seeds dressed in pink and big support tucked into a not so small room in her heart. 

Love you, he said.

Support you, they said.

A force, she said.

Inspiring, he said.

And she spilled and she spilled all the love she’d let herself take in.  Casting off old stories of “not good enough” or “undeserving.”  He felt her feet, solid on the ground.  Fear shapes released.

“I like me,” she said.

“I like me,” he said.

Concentric circles of whole, supportive ancestors all around them.

“This could save lives,” he said.

“Love like this could.”

“She told me I saved her life,” she said.

Because of love given, taken in.

Because of love felt and received.

Because of love opening a heart, to let all the monsters out.

© February 2014 by Kelsey Maloney