Inebriate

It's a creeping painA slow patient pain The layers thicken Before they flake

Her hiding place dissolves The past becomes now Her hands become putty Weakness cradled by pain

She is numb Held hostage by unconsciousness His want replaces love Her love replaces anger

An inebriate coupling A black mark on a porcelain surface Giving in giving up As hope melts to softness

She sleeps in the bosom of regret But upon awakening Her hands are strong again Recovered by night's forgiving embrace.

Appetite

I'm still learning who I am

A woman

With boyish handwriting

A voracious appetite

Nothing is ever enough

I want to shake harder

Sleep more but lie supine less

Do more

Be more

Dare I say have more

Know more

Write more

Back when I drank

Drink more.

A woman

Open to womanhood

As a map

To joy.

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Windows

I went outside and it smelled so good. I stood on a cinder block and danced to the music piped into my ears. I felt the morning sun heat up my face and my baby strapped warm against my core. Nine months inside of me, nine months next to me. I looked across rooftops, trees, water, past bridges past mountains, my gaze settling on the sky.

I danced and I knew happiness. I felt free.

Until I realized that anyone in my neighbor's laundry room could see me. They could be laughing at me. They could think I was crazy, or high, or both. A lot of people live in that house. They could be watching me the way I watch them folding laundry at night, not purposefully but because we are right in one another's line of vision. I sit at my computer, facing a window with a view. But at night the waters and mountains and trees fade to black, leaving only the illuminated window of their laundry room.

I stepped down from the cinderblock. The floating bridge in the distance disappeared behind houses.

I walked around the perimeter of my yard again. I want to memorize it now, in case I ever move. I know I will not live in this house forever. But I have grown attached to these walls where I've raised children and birthed a baby and loved a man and wrote words.

If the universe wants me to move, I will follow. If the earth wants me to feel my feet upon it, I will dance. If spirit wants me to play, I will dream.

Look for me out your window. I'm not afraid of being seen.

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

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Morning

Mornings open me

In the ethereal quiet of daybreak

I am free from excess thought and arbitrary restrictions.

Possibility looms in the form of light flooding from the east, clouds streaking the dome of sky.

A blank mind is a clean house, a new day is an unwritten page.

Coffee tastes better and I wish that mornings could last all day.

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Cobwebs

Opening feels like a cobweb of cracks around my soul.

As if I am a piece of glass and I have dropped myself onto concrete.

Not out of carelessness but because I am living and the risk inherent in living is breaking.

Light leaks through

Widening the gaps but also filling them in with the possibility of morning.

Who will I be today?

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Invisible cloak

My heart swings open.

They climb inside

Squirm

Get comfortable

It sounds like

The womb

Smells like

Heaven

Looks like

Beauty

Feels like

Somewhere hurt can't find

An invisible cloak

Of soft supple folds

Bound together

With a sheath of power

A gauzy squeeze

Ripped with bruises

Grasping

Gasping

For time

All they do is grow

Bloom

They are never the same

From one minute

To the next.

Neither am I.

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Kaleidoscope

My girls need me.

They need me to pay attention, soothe, be steadfast.

But I am erratic.

My attention is scattered in piles like fallen leaves in the autumn.

Cayenne crimson, turmeric orange, ginger yellow.

The colors of my temper, spicy like the evil twin

who lives somewhere in my head not heart.

The earth spins and the leaves die and

emotions run like wild horses and

no one can control any of it.

I see it in my daughter.

Four years-old with emotions loud as a train wreck.

She opens up her heart when its bursting and

spills her frustrations all over the universe.

Like fallen leaves in the autumn.

More than I am angry I am glad

She expresses herself with the freedom of a person who is safe.

Wild horses do not thrive in cages or in crowds.

But in wide open spaces

our emotions have room to dance and turn

an ever-shifting kaleidoscope

its beauty a product of all the colors.

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