What Love

Last night I dreamt of meeting a friend's new baby. 

She presented it to me - a boy- with all motherly

 love and conviction. 

She smiled, cooed, and 

doted over her little one. But the baby had

been born 

in 

pieces. 

While she held the limbless body 

tucked against her neck, 

the little one's head was on the carpet

next to an arm, a leg. 

In the dream she must have seen my worry for

she patiently explained how,

slowly,

the baby would become 

whole

and 

normal. 

She wasn't worried, she was happy, content, and beaming love.

I awoke sad and not a

little disturbed. I can still still remember

the blue eyes of her boy

and how I tried to make sure that no one

stepped on the little arms.

I can still remember that effortless 

love that she radiated

and wonder what that would be like

to wear for a day.

For a day to trust that

it will all work out.

To believe that what I make will 

add up to something

beautiful and

heart stopping.

To have faith

faith 

faith

that pesky word that 

at times

seems to be too heavy to carry and I

cast it off to hold something easier like

maybe

or

probably.

I held that baby - even if in my dream I was 

slightly repulsed by him-

for I would never turn away from 

a friend's child,

so why turn away from myself?

Am I afraid that the world will see that I am

not whole

that growing still needs me

or I need it?

When did I give myself the Title of Most Unworthy One?

It is time to 

take hold of my most repulsing self and

love it like a friend's child

with all the joy and 

hope for a future,

with all love and compassion

with all belief and faith and love.

Snow in the Evening

I am, hot chocolate in hand,
judging the barista who made it for her high
pitched
winey
voice.
I can feel my throat tighten up when
she talks
how constricted my own
vocal chords would have to be
to reach the height of her lilting
speech.
A part of me wants to liberate that part of her,
saying,
you can get my attention with out
the girlish squeal
without the definite screech of girlhood, which
she is far past.

Maybe it is how her mother spoke. Her
grandmother before that. Maybe they
both died before she
grew and her voice is
everything they left behind.
How much of me is struggling to hang on
to my mother,
her anxiety
her mood swings
her lumbering humor which endears far before it alienates.

Who am I to judge when I
too hold on to family
traits like I
would have my childhood blanket?
My sister's pride
my father's wandering spirit
and the way he can vanish
in a moment.
Their faults and attributes fall on my heart and
mound up like snow on boulders
I am an amalgamation of them,
and they,
me.

Who are we but a
continuation of each other?
Surround yourself with
people who rain down joy and love
because they will
pile on top of those wounds left
years ago and
heal
heal
heal
you and allow you to spin brightly into the world.

Sparkle and Fade and Sparkle Again into the Night

It's almost a gift that no one,

except you,

reads what I write here.

How long has it been that I've actually felt like writing?

A few years

but

the disconnect from such a love feels like an

eternity

and a part of me still laughs as 

my hands don't remember 

line breaks or how to 

unweave a thought

through 

syllables.

It will return,

it always does but for

now I'll 

chuckle at my own trippings

and trappings of a 

young writer

whose voice is tangled up

in cobwebs

from the years is sat

alone and 

dusty in the attic of

my life.

Move On - Move Out

Fall is having a hard time leaving our little valley. I tend to understand - it can be easy to see such a beautiful place to lay down and sleep through the cold season to come. The oaks would never mind Fall's extended stay and I am sure that the pines and meadows would eventually come around to the change. Bright red leaves still hang like decorations on the maple behind my house and I can admit that the colors are eye catching to my soul

but

I am yearning for winter. I love seeing the skeleton of the world as the chill peels back all of god's manicured beauty. I think that you can find the fighters, the motivated, the alive and thriving easier in the dark of winter. There is no space for half-hearted warm-weather friends or weak relations. Celebrate celebrate celebrate the shortening days as a reminder to live life to the last drop. My nose turns red in the air and I am reminded I am alive and well as others around me bemoan the weather as a personal affront. Can't you see that in

winter

the world is telling us to be grateful for every second? Watch the snowfall and know that soon the days will be longer and wistful. For now hunker down and count the gems around you, count the shining sparkling moments that at other times you would pass over. Fall, please move on to the next valley. I need to feel the depth of my heart as the temperature

drops

and the world weaves a new skin to cover what has been exposed.

Things I am Grateful For (There is More to Life Than Depression)

Yesterday I ran up a trail somewhere in the hills above my house,
and fell.
Runner's tenacity built and I picked myself up and kept running,
palms bloody and dirtier than spit and my t-shirt could clean
no water on that adventure and the trail continued to climb higher.
As I crested the ridge line I had been traversing, home lay out before me
like an old painting
madrones and ponderosas framing
the houses and roads far below
and I felt the peace that exhaustion and
blood letting bring my animal body.

Later, post
shower and shaking limbs steady,
you cleaned out my wounds over the sink,
digging out the dirt with a kitchen knife
and scrubbing out the gravel even as I sobbed
begged you to stop
you soothed me,
kissed my neck and
held me - not even laughing at my
childish aversion to pain.

What more do I need in the world?
Even when I storm, you
carry on
and light the way for me to follow,
holding my hand when I finally
catch up
and holding no grudge that it was you that had to lead the way.

Never forget that
it was always you
Never forget that.

Some days it is me,
comforting and supporting,

but I will never forget that yesterday
I saw you love me deeper than I thought you could
and love you more for the dirt
you scrubbed painfully away
from my life.

Norishment

I find it easy enough to motivate others with words that shout encouragement with each syllable. I lather on assurance as easily as butter melts on my toast each morning and with each moment I am hoping, shyly hoping, that I nourish whatever hope or dream that has been quietly growing deep within whoever I am cheering for.

The words I reserve for myself tend to be musty and stale. Full of accusations and shame, my dreams have grown bone thin and are half crazy for a drink of water. Sometimes my soul will reach a trembling hand outward, maybe just to relish in the crisp fall air, maybe just to feel the rain, but the leash my mind has tied around it has no give and I am yet again bound in a cage of my own design.

But, it is time to stop being dramatic and just open the door to freedom that has always been unlocked. Maybe its time to lighten up and laugh at yourself.

Maybe its time to wrap myself in those words I give to others so freely. Look at them like currency of happiness and drop a few coins in my own hat and climb out of the darkness.

Secrets

My story goes like this
page after page of self criticism
moments steeped in the doubt build like a fortress waiting
to become rubble
and I tell myself when all walls have fallen
I will be free of this pit of snakes living
in my stomach
they twine around my arms and throat
no more movement
no more breath.
My story continues
flashing back to lessons unlearned
and comparing this moment to that
comparing my life to theirs
and when we go point for point
tit for tat
I can't hold on to the score
and forfeit the game half way thought.

I'm telling a story I hate. A story
I never wanted to come true is
beginning to curl around the
edges of my life.

To kill it I will go back to whenever it was
that I decided that I was unlovable
or difficult
or unworthy.
I will weave a new tale out of the snake skins
that my tormentors leave behind,
a tale of beauty and forgiveness and happiness,
through those translucent unfoldings I will
whisper to myself of the joy
that I am
of the happiness that is hiding right behind
that mound of unease.

So here I go,
walking,
to my happiness
no one can bring me there
no one can walk step by step in line
no matter how they love me.
Let those twisting thoughts lie on
the cold ground
and walk toward warmth.
It is waiting for my open embrace.

A Day Out of Time

Mostly,
I see friends loving their birth-day.
Some wear it as a cloak,
or
a long loved crown
and spend their day dancing in
glory.
But
I love the quiet before my
birthday,
the preceeding week
the sunrise and
sunset
the twenty four before anyone thinks of anything as
my day.
It is as if all possibility stands before me,
as if I
distinctly
remember another time when
I could not breathe on
my own
and there was no
agenda but to live.

It feels like a get-out-of
jail-free card
a moment out of time
and my mother is still close
enough to beat her
heart in rhythm with
mine
and I alone am celebrating
what she and I
will go through tomorrow
no cake
no candles
just a glimmer of a memory that

today,

the day before I was birthed,
is when I made the most difficult and beautiful
declaration
I have ever
known.

The day before my birth was when I
decided to
come out into
 the sun and
live
apart from the
comfort
apart from the
warmth

all possibilities to fall or fly
all possibilites start today.

My Little Army

It takes all that I have to beat
down the cultural
timeline of my past,
of my mother,
of her mother,
of the centuries women walked through head
down
bundled up
hidden.
Power still comes with hips
swaying from right
to left
to lean back a shoulder and look
with heart but now
its all wrapped up in
two piece suits and
tight ass jeans
and pitting my life against hers and
wondering if you'll ever be that perfect
person
with the perfect life
and become who I am meant to be.

It is a force you feed, and mass
like a small army
those deadlines of
life
baby
man
house
perfect diet.
We stage all out wars with best friends and
magazine covergirls
we house our insidious soldiers in our
hearts and when
all three ventricles are full
they spill out into our lungs.

Lately I've been fighting them on my own
with a bat,
the wooden one that my father used
to teach me how to play
baseball
in the backyard
in summertime
in no rush to grow up.
I was someone dirty
and carefree then,
dreaming more than I slept,
and now
I'm rushing to hold on
to her.

After the slaughter,
I find this punishment to be too harsh,
the brutal force used against my
ideas of what-should-be
conter productive,
and in my anger to define
my life
my body
my dreams on
my own
I have culled everything,
even the most positive messaged culled.
the generations within
me gone,
cut away the voice boxes of the
women who birthed the woman that
birthed me
lost all connection
and suddenly I'm not a child
rebelling and free
and I'm not an
half-grown adult
running blind

and then suddenly
I'm sitting on a cliff,
far away from who I thought I
was
supposed to be,
the cage I built for my self
destroyed.
Here, there is
No trail in sight
no sign posts either.
Breathing into the
vastness of the sky,
I can begin again.
Sometimes
not knowing the way is the
exact
place become whole again.

Inheritance

I have a way of folding into myself
like poppies at night
hiding
from the chill of reality.
This happens when all trust has faded
all goodness seems to flee
out of the pores in my skin
leaving my body to sit
on the branches of trees I pass
singing to me of what
I could have been-
all happiness abounds,
while I shrink further in my dry skin.

Some people loose faith in others
or god
or the future looms to great.
I loose sight of my feet
and hands fade from view
and suddenly
I've lost faith in myself
and am unable to laugh at the
sheer human-ness of my
crisis.

How many people have lived through
this plight?
This breathlessness that comes from
feeling not worthy.
Crowns are passed down from father to son
Mother to daughter,
but we also get their pain bound tight within,
one more attempt for redemption.

To walk tall and proud,
you must allow yourself to be worthy and
scream those words out
even when night has fallen and loneliness
is the only companion in sight,
I am worthy,
I am worthy and
laugh again at the silliness and pain
of being human.

Kitchen Cut Outs

Who are we - the walk
away type,
the silent yet yearning masses that
want to pull
down
that fence
jump off into
nothing
but cannot find the
strength of
soul to
change course.

All my mother does is
dream.

Places she has wanted to
visit and touch
are only magazine cut outs in
our kitchen
are only whispers and
temptations - I say
I'm better than
that
but I steep in my
own imagination's
trails more
and more these days
wandering to no end.

It can all add up.
A green meadow caught in
fading alpine glow,
his smile,
laughter bigger
than I knew.
When will I take the
path I am already on,
and stop looking for a fork to
lead to far away mountains?
I'll lay down,
on this uneven ground, and
dream into
reality
dream of a life chosen
and walk away no
more.

The Search

Words spill like water
falling down from river's end on
rock on sand onto my open palms.
I cannot keep them, these
black on white beings twist out of the
world quicker than
my heart beats and
again I am searching for their elusive print
in my mind.

These days, life seems to be strung together
from one search to another
like lanterns in the dark.
As soon as I find one answer I am
diving for the next question,
hoping it will lead me to an answer that will solve all of
the question marks and let me sleep.

What would life be without yearning for the perfect
response? I expect
I would sleep more and eat
less, find less
comfort in
the sunset and no longer bathe in the blue
rivers of my youth.

I'm lucky, my search is never
ending, never
over.
With all question marks by my side,
I will keep over turning rocks to see
what words skitter out
what monochromatic gods reveal themselves to me,
and catch a glimpse of heaven for a moment
in the sand.