that's it

That’s it.  There is too much new.  Too much time, too much space, too much free.  This moment as I try to strip myself of the old I’m scared that after all I gave away and all I wish to shed there will be nothing left of who I was to mix with the who I wish to be.

I fill the space between sleep with lists of subtle avoidance.  Slowing runs the risk of this novice juggler fumbling and the charade being up as it all crashes down.

Even this tree acknowledges me a stranger.My back does not fit in this place of still.  I have yet to stay long enough to align myself with it and the chill in the air encourages me to wrap tight myself, but Fine is a blanket of too few letters.

favorite thing

Breathe the smell from when the rain has cleared but the heat has not quite been bullied away. You stretch your neck and roll the weight of the world off your shoulders. Breath those rare deep breaths the reach all the way to the bottom of your lungs. Each one lingering there as you feel your body healing itself from this life.

pass

On those days you can't bring yourself to speak. To push words out of your mouth would be betraying your own being. Breaking your own silence would be letting a part of you out. escape. You need every little bit of you just to keep yourself together.

When the thought of getting up out of your seat is frightening. When you would rather sit for an hour than wonder hopelessly about the house with a heavy feeling of lost in your stomach. That feeling of not wanting to be anywhere, knowing that is impossible, and waiting for it to pass. 


You will process the grief from the lost sunshine when you can find room for it in your lap. There are no tears, just a body weighed down by every primary emotion mixed in to make brown.

On those days, I will arch my back and speak up, not out.  So that my words rain back down to earth and settle on you.  Soak into your skin.  Words of love and hope and truth.

Then wait.  I can wait.

rubber stamp

The danger is in believing this is all there is.  Projecting a ‘copy, paste, repeat’ view of the future.  Giving into the darkness.  Losing sight of the day.

tide

I write with a mechanical pencil, like so many things in this world.  But I want to kneel with shells pressing into my legs as I scribble with my hand in the damp sand where the water has been, but the tide has called away to explore distant lands.  That someday I hope to follow.

thin

Life is moving so fast that all I can do is throw words down behind me as I run and hope they leave a trail that can be followed.   I hold my thoughts awkwardly in one arm, trying to select the right ones with the other.  The path splits and folks off til I’m spread so thin I feel like I’m playing twister with the ones I love.  No one gets more than a limb.  Those touched be a hand do better than ones about to get the boot.

seesaw not seen

cold stones stacked tall. dark. empty.  we grew up, they moved away.  now i pass by everyday and sigh.  fleeting in and out of lives, now only i remain.  summer nights spent in mustard yellow and blue; on couches in the dark willing time to stop.  first loves lost.

the ball court where no ball could be played for the cracks in the heat and the puddles in the cold.  we talked for hours until we were caught by parents, who had been looking for us for those same hours while we should have been at home.  a simpler time, before phones on the hip of every seven-year-old, though much harder for a mother searching for a child.  but our parents should have learnt to come first to the place where Tora once stood.  sitting on a tree stump big enough to fit five. 

now the seesaw has not been seen in years, the playground fort but lost.

but the stones don’t hold our memories.  this time before rent and responsibilities lives on in the spark in our eyes when we meet again, and talk about the way the floors creaked as you tried to sneak and how we thought we knew it all.