it's funny, however.

 

It felt as if all of heaven and earth came crashing down and sitting up all around me 

As I lay on the ground 

Back to the earth and arms outstretched with palms up. 

I am scared.

So this is who I am now. 

Ice. On weekend nights. Stumbling after the sundown. 

I remember an evening in late October, a song floating around a white garage, still touched by summers clinging vines of familiarity. I didn’t want to move on. Complacency, an unexpected knife to my throat. 

It was both rare and not so rare. I forced my sister into posing for a film portrait, sitting in the backyard, I fancy myself more than I am. A body that is bigger and made of stars and thunderheads boiling along the edge of green prairie. 

And here I am again. Fading. 

Your gaze. It made me feel like I was worth looking at. 

Is it so wrong to be all tied up like this? Or am I just telling myself that because somehow- that night and that hope but also the distance in an October almost three years ago, it all ties into now. The faces and the feelings. A tenderness, a newness, but also, the strongest penchant for leaving ever felt. Again and again and again. 

I look back into the colors and see my life peppered with the twisting of my leaving, again and again and again. Freedom, I say. I like being free. 

(But is it maybe fear I'm not trying to address here?)

Why? Are some days made so easily for leaving but other days I am all tied up. 

Because except for the soft moments when falling asleep or waking, that’s what you feel like. 

Tied up. 

Staying and leaving. Tugging, pulling, sitting. 

My heart in my hands. It belongs to me, fully. 

Normally tucked away where few have seen (but it does belong to me),

 It’s funny

however

don’t know why I keep showing it to you. 

 

that's the thing

and then sometimes I find myself f a l l i n g down around myself.

how strange- 

how strange indeed.

roll the dice, melt the fire,

burn the ice. 

I'm not sure if things are getting easier or if I'm just getting better at ignoring things.

but that's the thing 

//about laying on my bed

//about taking a deep breath

//about remembering His presence

//about this weird thing and these pieces we hold in our hands

of each other.

where were you when I was still kind

(november 1)

I will avoid saying the things that come to mind

In effort to drum up some miniscule portion of creativity.

I am afraid of love.

I willingly capture it so eagerly with my weaker left palm

But my stronger right arm londs it closer but will not grasp.

Do you know what it’s like to sit on the edge

And hate it

And not be able to move

where were you when I was softer

like spring leaves on tender branches

dreaming of the day someone would be able to understand my thoughts and forced poetic predispositions.

now there is space for healing (and that is good)

but with the spaces comes miles and miles of distance from the inner workings of my brain 

which is continually filled by the hum of other human bodies around mine in close proximity 

(but not too close, we are still in a pandemic, after all)

now I eat salted lime tortilla chips on my bed and wish that I had had bought fruit instead.