Skeleton Woman rose up from the canyon dust. Well, was gathered. Dry cactus limb by cactus limb, we found her and remembered her shape like this, put her back together so we could sit, four days and three nights, for her vigil. I say we, it was me and the panther one who sat beside her, told her story back to her with the canyon rocks and juniper for witnesses.
Skeleton woman had died giving birth. Like an invisible stone going direct and silent to the river bed, she’d birthed something unusual - something for the ancestors and the rivers and the ones who knew these kinds of mysteries. She’d birthed a sweet river stone baby, and like most unusual things, the world didn’t know how to catch something like that, as it slipped out into the dark night waters.
Skeleton woman is the song of all the ones who birth the land when nobody is watching, sometimes they continue their song and watch this life unfold, but sometime they die with the heartbreak of all that is lost when nobody remembers this.
We tended her over many seasons and many lands, gathered her up again in the winter, in moss and damp. Lifted the stone baby from her belly over and over again, breastfed it and gave it life. Sang her back to herself. As we sang (panther one and I), we came a little back into ourselves. Little by little, stitch by stitch, we remembered their vigil in the canyon that spring. As we stitched a strange thing appeared. A beating heart, deep in skeleton woman’s resting chest.
Sometimes a flame rises up out of the ashes like new breath and you see a piece you hadn’t seen before, like Skeleton Woman surrendering to sky that March morning after three nights of song, like the One who Gives Birth to Life remembering herself through skin touching bone, hand in hand, song in song. They go together you see, Skeleton Woman and the One who Gives Birth to Life. They always have, and they always will.
🌘🌿❤️
Hand dyed materials with pomegranate, pine, eucalyptus, yarrow, goldenrod, onion, madder, (found in lands including England, Germany, Spain and Turtle Island) ✨
