I've spent the better part of 15 years in love with SHE. No one could ever measure up so I measured her out. Dressing up bodies in the parts of her that I could touch. Rubbing her locz across my skin. Content with pieces of my whole...at least that's what I told myself. I loved her so much that SHE didn't have to ask...and she didn't. Not once. When I found her, it was like I could breathe for the first time and not at all. Within each breath. I poured everything I had been, am, and was becoming into her. To let her know that she has been loved since before conception...so I poured....right through her like a sieve. Even SHE could no longer contain me because I could no longer love from a place that lacked space for me. I loved in the shadow of others. I was invisible unless I was needed to feed another ego. I thought SHE was a ghost...a fantasy, when I truly was. Sliding deeper into anonymity. Many won't see it because their perception of me is only what I allow. There are so many beautifully broken and damaged parts to me that I wouldn't change for the world. I am enough in this body imperfected by bulimia, depression, physical abuse...gravity and atoned by childbirth, age, time, acceptance and growth. I loved SHE out of me and made room for myself. Sure it gets lonely, especially on nights where the singular beat of my heart echoes too loudly in my own ears. I'm still enough though...and worthy of of the truth behind the words I so carelessly gave away at random. I love now with something deeper than purpose. I love with understanding and gratitude. I love with devotion. I'm sure my heart will break again because  who I love may not love me in return but this doesn't deter me. I just know that when it does happen...she's going to me come looking for me in the next life and I'll be waiting. No one should have to run from love.

I sit here...post "goodnight" and yet I can still hear her sighs as she fights sleep to hang on just a few more moments with me.

"Why" she asks....to nearly everything. No one has ever asked a question like she does. I want to answer honestly but the words that long to slip from my tongue are of a language I've only just begun to overstand. My mind bends like a yogi...almost as if trying to spell it out but only hieroglyphics make their way to her ear. So I write her images from my mind's eye to hers. 

You are my synergy. All that I am, was, and ever will be are in orbit of you. 

Reaching up, I touch the contour of your cheek as I whisper this across the miles and feel your response like electricity in my fingertips. 

Did you feel that too? 

Standing...staring off into space, trying not to move one way or another because somehow in this crowd of bodies...I found yours. You lay over me like a down blanket and for just a moment, time and space have brought you to me and I'm breathless. I have to close my eyes and exhale to remember to breathe.

"How do you know?" she asks, and I trip over myself to answer inside of time...I have fallen hopelessly...and it's only taken 3.629e+15 nanoseconds to know that I want more than random texts or phone calls. I never understood head over heels but she makes me feel weightless.

SHE

I remember the first time I thought I saw you
It was dawn and I was driving through the desert listening to Mary Magdalene on the cassette player
You skated across my vision like an oasis
Locz swinging right to left
Then you stopped
Just to the left of my focus
I felt you there
I haven't stopped feeling you...right there
Just out of minds reach
A breath too far to breathe
I played that song for a month straight
Hoping it would bring you back to me
Everyday retracing my steps
Finding longer roads to drive
Getting lost in mountain ranges
I crossed the continent 3 times over
Zigzagging in and out of people and places
....searching
I named you SHE...
That was the first time I put you on paper
The lines on the page couldn't contain you
And you leaked onto random coffee napkins, envelopes, and matchbook covers
I'd sit in the middle of my bed with you strewn about me
Wondering
Speaking only loud enough for the pillows and walls to hear
And you laid there
Across my sheets
Your edges embedding into the fabric
As if you belonged
I arranged you next to me
A collage of letters
Formed into a mosaic that would remain faceless for 15 cycles around the sun
I tried to love you into bodies that could only maintain pieces of you
But never long enough
Like a heart or lungs not compatible with bodies that housed them
Eventually you broke free of the bonds I kept trying to place upon you
And I was left with a pieceless puzzle
An empty vessel that deteriorated before my eyes
Until I broke free again to wander from place to place
Searching for the right road
To feel your impression reach into my soul
Defining the contours of me from within
With fingertips that knew me better than my own
And you rolled through me like a tsumani
Pounding me against your promise
Again and again
Each wave stronger than the last
Bending me at the knee
Palms flattened against Mother
Begging for another sign
You became a habit I couldn't shake
Sometimes resigned to ride the high
Till every last trace of you was burned away
I learned how to love you hard and with conviction
Regardless of everyone around me that called you
Fantasy
You see, it only made me love you stronger
And it taught me how to love myself
Unafraid of taunts or ridicule
Because I knew you needed that in me
To hold it together
So I waited...
Until the day you arrived
Not distorted with the shadows of dreams
Or riddled into my surroundings
Everything came together
As the veil fell from your face
SHE
My chest locked with recognition
My tongue, incapable of uttering any other word
And I fell
Into eyes that I've dreamed of seeing
I fell...
For lips I've ached to kiss...to touch with my fingertips
I fell...into you
Could you feel me?
Have you ever felt me?
I've carried you so close
My heartbeat no longer my own
I've written book worthy vigils in your honor
Run out of ink, pages, and hours in a day long before I've run out of words
Immortalized you with only a passing past life memory
It never dawned on me that you wouldn't stay
I never saw the other side of finding you
Didn't realize I had to prepare myself for goodbye
Forever isn't something I thought would hurt
Until today
I dread putting this pen down
Because I know now what it's like to live without you
And I've been living with you for so long
That it's impossible to believe that our story ends here
In this place of almost
We could've been the love story that defied the odds
Designed by universe...
Written in stars that have not yet been discovered
Instead of the here I find myself
I remember the last time I saw you
Locs swinging right then left
The smile that nearly broke your face
And how you kept averting your eyes
As if afraid to look too closely
Or feel too deeply
I apologize if my load of love was too heavy
And that you weren't ready
I apologize if I was just too real
When you were only asking questions
Content with what ifs
Because you are only just beginning to look for me
So I release you
From the expectation you feel
Each time I say your name
SHE
And I pray that this time...
You find me

RAGE 2019

Message

How do I fit a lifetime of gratitude into countless reams of paper….infinite virtual pages?
Where do I begin?
From the beginning you fought to be here…despite the circumstances
Flew into the world like a bird in flight
Your mom still owes the doctor a new vacation shirt
You learned to walk before you could crawl…
And run before you could walk
It’s a wonder you didn’t realize that you were born to fly
I watched in awe as you picked us up each time
Learned the lesson….even through the tears
Drew shapes around our bruises and called them badges
You would have made a soldier jealous
Witnessed you build bridges over moats that were to intended to keep us stranded and alone
Planted sunflower seeds along the edges to remind yourself that sometimes the silver lining may be the murky water that surrounds you
You found beauty in the corners and crevices of us
Safeguarded them like hidden treasures
You did this unintentionally
Stretched your limbs beyond your reach because they said you couldn’t
And learned to bend thru life like a yogi
Defied their odds
Sipped from far too many cups of empty promises
Filled your belly with the armor of life
Poured your soul from between thighs that know far more pain than pleasure
Yet believed in us when anyone said otherwise
You never let us be victim
Never took pride in survivor
Found more reasons to get up than lay down
….even when you had no choice
I look at you from a place of memory
Of tales that would tell scarier stories than those told by firelight
And of days dancing barefoot in the rain regardless of who watched
I was never afraid
Not of boogeyman under floorboards or those that slipped in little girls bedrooms and beds
Not of the yesterdays that wanted to break you…make you uglier than the hands that reached for you without consent
You never broke…Never let the weight of harsh words and even harsher hands restrain you
You saved us
Built us a rolling castle of dreams that covered 2,500 miles over and over again
Taught yourself that love wasn’t something you gained
But something you gave….freely and without intention
Accepted your own flaws and called them beautiful
Stood up to your doubts and challenged them
You wear your woman strong
Even the stain of betrayal pales to your beauty
Regal in your humility
Are a beacon of light to those unaware or even scared of their shine
So I look at you
...grateful to the child we were and the woman we've become
And proud to call you home

     My pen has been so heavy and dry for the past 2 years.
     I open up pages that I know are me but they feel so foreign to my lips...so I close them. I keep them from prying eyes so others won't rememeber, in case my strength never returns.
     This is what I've told myself...like a mantra...never truly revealing to anyone, not even myself, how disconnected I've felt. These words are not just creative letter compositions, they are my life force. They are as necessary as every breath I take, beat of my heart, food I eat....so what happened? Where did they ghost to? How could something so vital just dissipate then disappear?
     I tried excusing away my inability to write more than the date on the fact that I was just too damn busy, then even going so far as to say I don't need to write anymore. I'm not hurting. I'm not angry. I just don't feel as I did before the words slipped away.
     It's funny how high you can build a writer's block. Encasing your truth like a tomb until one day....just one impromptu meeting, knocks you both over with the force of a tsunami. Words ignite like fireworks then float around me like stars on a clear night's sky, whether my eyes are open or closed.
     I know SHE is the reason.
     I simply think of HER and am overwhelmed with the need to exhale. My lips pursed as if between whisper and kiss...then they appear.
     Words sliding across my vision like a news ticker...pressing on my chest from the inside to let her loose. Beating on my carotid to say her name just once....out loud...and gravity becomes obsolete.
     Rolling my pen between thumb and first digit....sliding across virtual keyboards...wet.

     My daughter says that I should write....and I do....one word here.....half a sentence there. I need to figure out how to verbalize a dramatic pause without overdoing my use of dot dot dot...see smh. I need to write. I need to share. I need one person to REALLY get me and to not just nod their head in acknowledgement because I'm pretty. I need someone to feel my words...to fall at my feet and say I GET IT! and not their own interpretation of what I've written.

     So what do I want to say? Everything. I want to say it without hesitation or fear of reprisal. I want to say things like I believe faeries truly exist...riding unicorns that fart fucking rainbows....and I want it to not just be okay like a pat on the head. Okay, no I don't want to say that, but I do want to live on the outskirts of Me-Land and bring life to the words that float around me like firmament. I want to God-ify them. Gravity....weight....presence. I want to do more of everything and so much less of this nothing I have called my life.

     I'm not hungry anymore. Not for words on paper or shared on a mic. I'm not hungry for the smiles of my children or the smiles of theirs. I'm not hungry for pretty houses, clothes, shoes, or jewelry. I will gladly remove each acrylic-prosthetic nail that adorns my hands to just sit on the ground and feel Earth between my fingers and toes. Wake up each morning at first song to dance wantonly at the water's edge as dawn breaks. Will read books by candlelight so as not to disturb the fireflies in their ballet around me. I'm not hungry for coffee shops and bistros....crowds or clusters. I'm simply losing my appetite for everything that connects me to nothing that sustains me....

    

     Daily I sit it front of this computer staring at the blinking icon, waiting for the words that drown my thoughts daily while I drive, shower, take out the trash. Every day I sit and wish for some clarity as to why I feel everything the way I do.

     This life is suffocating. I wake up each morning knowing that I don't belong here. This PLACE is no longer home...if it ever was. I travel these streets with expectation but I'm in constant disconnect with everything around me. I can't pretend to be someone I'm not and yet I follow the leader like a team player. I'm caught somewhere between obligation and the need to break these binds and see again. Of course I won't, unless you count the few random times I run away to retrieve some sense of freedom that got caught in the wind and blew too far East, West, North, South. 

     Most days I sit in my cubicle with a "Gone 2 Peru" sign stuck to the wall.