Claiming wings

I open to Acceptance / Being enough / Needing not stuff the spaces between moments with nothing but joy

I open to

Ease / Sitting with pain looking directly at beauty / The glare like summer sun

I open to

Abundance / The evidence of opportunity compelling creation / The responsibility of privilege, the privilege of responsibility

I open to

Expansion / Honing thoughts with presence / Exploring new frontiers in the galaxy of the mind

I open to

Angels / Communing over cups of faith and faerie dust / Commonplace miracles

I open to

Serendipity / Intuition embodied by spacious possibility / Guidance from the nuances of oxygen

I open to

Sunlight / The heat of it piercing pregnant clouds / The completeness of a circle.

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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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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Wilting majesty

Wilting majesty.

Reaches deep into earth.

History etched into her rings.

Reminds us how young our years and shallow our roots.

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Summer's sticky pace

What is already open?

Heart.

Hunger.

Love an ever thickening pulse that directs every move.

Ambition an intravenous substance that keeps me moving

Even at summer's sticky pace.

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Unfurling

She opens to this plane of being

Unfurling unfolding uncurling

Like the spiral of hair on the crown of her head

She stretches her limbs longer today than yesterday

Grabbing and kicking at an understanding

Of what it means to exist

Here and now.

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Infinite tunnel

Everyday I open to the love that pulses through my veins

A love that comes from unfathomable depths through infinite tunnels

I fear this love will turn me mad and still, I love on

An interesting shade of beauty shines with messy precision

I cannot conquer the messes nor match the precision

Either I open to this beauty and it trickles through me

Infusing everything I feel, say, touch, hear and do

Or the beauty paralyzes me

I can't move lest everything fall to pieces

Opening contracting closing

Closing is part of the opening.

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Opening

Opening to the tightness in my hips the weakness in my shoulders the strength in my legs /

Surrendering to the hormones in my blood the softness in my belly the crookedness of my spine /

Embracing the milk in my breasts the asymmetry of my face the truth in my smile /

Seeing light through my eyes hope through my words the future through my children.

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Shadow side of sweetness

Opening to what isThe shadow side of sweetness The flaws beneath An impeccable surface Smooth to the sight But not to the touch.

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Empty afternoons

faith flies in / cupping my heart urgency flies away / leaving in its place empty afternoons / pliant possibility

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my full moon super powers

my full moon super powers--

Fly. See all of creation from up there. Skip through space to embody unknown dimensions. Walk to the other side of this planet. Understand the nature of beauty. Feel history as it pulses under my skin. Read a book by picking it up. Traverse the highway of time. Float. Levitate. Hover. Become everyone at once. Speak without words. Communicate across blank spaces. Shapeshift. Tumble through clouds. Read my heart aloud. Hold conviction as strong as the ocean. See God in the looking glass. Memorize the map engraved upon the deepest layer of spirit. Live the loftiest existence of my soul's imagination. Catch my baby's cries with unconditional kisses. Hold them forever. Grant grandiose wishes with the wink of my eye. Erase conflict with the nod of my head. Become the wind. Exhale abundance. Hear the echoes of animals. Unpeel the scars of living. Disappear. Reappear. Remember. Turn inside out. Show my insides to the kindred. Love all the children. Breathe in the babies. The crown of each head. Wrap my arms around the ocean. Unwrap the meaning of now. Sit in the stillness of sun. Bloom. Keep faith between my fingers, always close to my fingertips. Intuit without doubting. Play life like a movie. Slow motion. Rewind. Fast forward. Repeat. Open. Heart, mind, soul. Of infinite boundaries.

Photo credit: Alisha Sommer

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Midnight possibility

The nightsThey burn My eyes Open Midnight possibility I dip into dreams That stop without Ending Until I give in to day An empty wakefulness

Great heights

Should I discard the compulsion to do?

Break out from the shell of expectation

Shed this comfort of protection, this belief I'm doing fine as long as I'm moving

Could it be about finding stillness instead?

Like the tree whose great heights come from standing still.

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Leave

I know enough to know

That perfection is fleeting

Misleading

And things could fall apart

If we turn our backs

For a second too long

Tsunamis start

Long before land turns to sea

Hence vigilance

Warning systems carefully constructed

No one will protect you

But you.

Break away from

A static hold

Set the alarm

Lock the door

Leave the house

Adventure outward

Lose your way

Lose the key

Break in through the window

You know the code

No one can keep you out

But you.

Tied up tangled

My hair so often left behind

Long & dirty

Tied up tangled

Unhidden strands of silver.

Today

I let the curling iron burn waves into the broken ends

While music rolled through

My belly

And the baby watched and I danced.

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These Shoes

When I wear these shoes the earth feels soft beneath my feet

the pieces of me that won't be confined are free to be broken.