LIMINALITY*

 

Liminality
Threshold is the no-time between who I was

And who I will be

Taken to the bathhouse as a rite of passage
Old man Bannik ignores us in the midnight moonlight by a lake

His job is to keep the rocks and water steaming
My Gypsy bibi—aunt--looking like a miniature of my mother
Gives me a new secret name 
I must take to my end, no one to know
Except me and she
Shivering in this empty house despite fiery water
A faceted glass of blood-red wine in my hand

This 15^th day of my 15^th year

Latin class reminding me
Fifteen is Ides like Caesar's March betrayal
Autism overcomes and I giggle thinking
Et tu, Brute

“Pay attention!” hisses Bibi Kirivi

Then says, “After spending this day and night with you,

This is what I believe:

Although you do not physically travel as we ancestors did,

You have a

Duxo Phirimasko

Wandering soul

I do not know what is different but you

Cannot learn to be like we

You are always longing for another star

Like a reaching tree

In your mind

In your soul

I cannot pass along the power to you”

 

So nothing had changed

This 15^th day of my 15^th year

The Bannik handed me a cool cloth

And I washed and dressed

A young man appeared out of the bushes

Leading us to an old car

Escorting us home

 

It was the autism, I think, decades later

An unknown at that time leaving me

No way of explaining my failure to

Carry the torch into the next generation

So was I that romantic-sounding yet lonely wandering soul

Or was it merely that chipped—mutilated--chromosome?

 

Perhaps her abandonment will not hurt as much

If I think about the sad song sung by Lee Marvin in

Paint Your Wagon

We cannot help who we are

All us lonely people

Were we all born under a wandering star…?

 

©2023 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE: Abandoned Bathhouse WebUrbanist

*MY MYTHOLOGY, A MUST-HAVE PER JOSEPH CAMPBELL

https://youtu.be/-jYk5u9vKfA YouTube video Lee Marvin