by ANTONIA DEIGNAN

Jack Deignan, *Ojo,* digital art, 2023. Courtesy of the artist.

CREATION

ANTONIA DEIGNAN | NOV 2023 | Issue 29

Can we awaken to the mystery of the unknown? When the eye of the storm pauses to sing, and blankets of sand lift from stillness, and death awaits in graveyard cleaves, in ancient times and tomorrows; the silence wishes to teach us (oh wonder), the soil, the water, the larger than, more than human world — mysteries call.

I wake and weave. And the energy within me, in the early morning time, my time, without a clock or tick tock, the lazy, drunken swollen time, transitions me from dream and dreaming to the waking state, that fluid portal, coaxing me closer to the change I seek in my ways of being. Creation.

I avoid the cry of whelm, I act “like I’ve been there,” blasé. But awe will not be minimized; “LOOK,” she harmonizes, her eyes wet and wide, “hurry up, slow down, be quick, stay longer, squeeze, let go.” And so. I touch the walls, bend my knees, feel the tension of floor beneath my feet as it builds within my thighs. I open the cage of my ribs for more air, stretch my body, twist it over, under, pull my torso and limbs into the shape of an ancestral tree, my family before me, the universe, the history of the world behind me, in me, the wilderness and planetary awe growing from my marrow, my frame, (and why not) longing, rapture, ravishment and yes.

Can I banish time, the technological tinkering, and bow reverently, ego-lessly, to today’s sun’s rays pooling on my windows’ sills, shadows transitioning, dusk, daybreak, alive?

I queef. I yawn. I breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. I lasso the previous night’s dreamings, lust, adventure, naughtiness, wild tongues, deep down throats, shuddering and free. Blissful I am, and hungry for the page again, to write and explore the magic that came just before. Remembering. Unremembering.

Unremembering, as she did, physical touch beyond her, my mother was void of sensual tenderness and loving limbs and puddled navel’s sweat, in the folds of her groin, underneath her eyes.

Unremembering was how I witnessed her, in death’s throes, tied to devil’s tubes. She rocked and jockeyed that hospital bed, and her body drained, and was tormented under her black sea of nightmares, mistakes, pride, and a relentless desire to win, a clenching ferocity to survive. I saw her, wracked and breathless, unremembering, dis-eased, unwinding, rewinding.

Only that day, she lived. Only that day she stayed. It was demon magic that helped her return to back-alley life hacks, and nighttime slip-aways. She defied God, Buddha, Light. And her stockpile of ego’s suffering, herself the daughter of no mother, she was the misbehaving orphan, the cheated wayward, alone, uncared for, she betrayed everyone.

My breaths fill in, escape out, wave in, ease out, oceans of air. I let her go, honor her, humbly, lovingly, because I must. Because we must.

She travels before I do, beyond this life’s slime and mould, from today’s cadence of raucous sea and tranquil wonder, into the randomness of mystery. Into creation.

Antonia Deignan’s memoir, Underwater Daughter – A Memoir of Survival and Healing, published by She Writes Press, launched in May 2023 and is a First Place Bookfest Award 2023 winner, a Best Book award 2023 finalist in Nonfiction, and is short-listed for the Chanticleer International Book Award. She is featured in three anthologies, Covid Monologues, edited by Knight & Silva, Art in the Time of Unbearable Crisis, edited by S. Raffelock, and the Story Summit’s Anthology, We See You We Hear You. Her work has been published with Manifest-Station, Zibby’s Magazine, Storied-Stuff, and will be in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Expressive Writing. She was Fiction Category Winner of the San Francisco Writers Conference 2022.

Jack Deignan graduated from UCLA with a BA in English with a specialization in Creative Writing in 2022. He is currently living in Madrid, Spain, teaching high school English. Jack loves all things creativity and expression, on a mission to help as many people as possible become the highest versions of themselves. He spends his free time writing, reading, designing, meditating and meeting new people. He is also the author of the 2021 science fiction book An American Family.