Dead Metaphors.

"No spring flowers. No autumn leaves," said my poetry professor in my first creative writing class in college. It was his mantra, his technique to convince a group of 18 year olds to write something fresh, new, exciting. After his 20-something year career teaching creative writing, I'm sure he'd tired of reading the same poems about butterflies spreading their wings among the spring flowers from young folks writing about their transitions into adulthood...

I got it. I wanted to be different. It was important to me that my writing be new and exciting. I wish I'd gotten it in a truer way, though. I wish I'd let his words sink deeper. I wish I hadn't let myself feel the hope unfolding last spring when I believed that my husband really was going to get better, that we'd be starting a new life, having a fresh start. When it was the first of May last year, it seemed like he'd finally gotten clean, finally quit the relapsing, the constant back and forth with detox. I really believed it would be over soon. It already felt like it had gone on for too long, and it seemed like there must be something new, just around the bend.

The spring flowers are kind of cold to me this year.

There are good things that have happened to me. I've learned a lot about myself, and I'm grateful. I still wish it hadn't had to hurt. I wish my memory of myself this time last year didn't sting. I wish I could look at the flowers and still find them to be so full of meaning.

Headstand.

I've wanted badly to be able to do a headstand. When it's time in yoga class for our inversion, the instructors often tell us to choose our inversion from many, but they walk us through the shoulder stand.

And don't get me wrong. Sarvagasana is a great pose. I like feeling all the blood pooling in my head, feeling my body calming down and cooling off after the long, sweaty class. I like flopping my legs over the top of my head into plow and feeling the tops of my feet pressing against the floor. Shoulder stand is fabulous in its own way.

But I want to stand on my head. One of my teachers said one time that sirasana is the king of all yoga poses. I have looked around the room, jealously, at the students ignoring the teachers walking through sarvagasana and slowly unfolding themselves into a beautiful, tall, strong, head stand.

As a little girl, I could stand on my head. I took gymnastics classes, and we learned to do the tripod headstand there. I loved it, and I loved folding into and out of it, kind of climbing up my own arms until I found my world upside down, felt my spine stretching long in places where it's normally short and compacting in places it's normally long. I wanted to feel that freedom, that upside-down, disconcerting freedom again as an adult.

I started trying to climb into the pose a few weeks ago, and I could never get my legs up off my arms. I'd try to reach even one toe a little higher up, and it felt as if my legs weighed a thousand pounds each. They wouldn't budge.

But I kept trying, and guess what? Tonight, my feet lifted, and I felt my stomach tighten, and my legs came off my arms! I didn't get my legs all the way straight, but I felt it coming. I took three full breaths with my legs slowly rising and rising before I trembled and fell to the floor.

I am so excited! Soon, I think, I'll be able to do it beautifully!

It occurred to me that asking my husband to leave but not being able to follow through is something like my first, tentative, awkward movements towards sirasana. I felt something opening up within me, and some part of me that was weak is stronger now. I'm getting closer to something, something elegant, strong, and wonderful.