Small

Small

There are so many ways of dying to

believe yourself alive.

Bottles meet lips

fists meet wall

blades meet skin

food meets mouth - or doesn't -

fingers move to back of throat.

And when I wake, my body begs me

for a second chance.

Always too small and too

large for this world, I have only ever wanted to

bring myself to life.

To breathe inside this skin without

the ghosts who try to live here:

there is a constricting spaciousness in silence that

shrinks me smaller until I am

nothing - this physical body is too large,

takes up

too much

space --

this place of small is

familiar and

gives the ghosts the space they need to

inhabit this too-much, this

not-enough, this --

I wonder if

impossibility

is the only way I know to love myself.

Wonder if the only way I can be small

enough is by not

speaking, 

ridding myself of heart or

brain or

body, I let the

ghosts fill my empty spaces.

There are so many ways of dying to

keep yourself alive.

Shaking voice forms truths too

holy for silence, too

holy for speaking.

Coded tongues drop words from

bitten lips:

oh, Impossible One --

there is courage here

even when
everything 

shatters.

The one with all the signs

Lately, I find myself feeling as though I am standing on the edge of a precipice.  In many ways, I feel I have spent a long time standing on such ledges, looking over, and out, and down, and wondering how and where I would be going next.  I have spent so much time frightened and unsure, and convincing myself that I am strong, and present, and brave.  It was January 2014 that I first made the intention to myself to be brave.  While I told myself that intention was only a year, that intention never left.  That word has been my word for three years.  How desperately I have tried to learn it, to move into it, to embrace it.  How often it has exhausted me, pushed me past what was healthy or right.  And how I have also lived that word.  I have lived every ounce of life out of that word in these three years.

And I know that because it is no longer my word.  As I was driving yesterday, I was realizing how small the word sounds to me now.  In the face of the battles I have fought this year, in the face of the battles we as a nation are moving into, in the face of the questions that are rising in me, the word "brave" is simply no longer large enough.  The trepidation and anxiety and resolution I used to feel within that word are gone.  It is just a word, now, tapped of the power it once held.

I arrived on this thought in a roundabout way: I was thinking about poetry, and about words, and about my favorite word.  My favorite word is "vast" because it is such a small word that sounds so large, just like its meaning.  It creates this enormity of space in my chest when I say it that makes me feel like I blend with the universe in all its exquisite vastness.  (I love the word exquisite, too, because it sounds like fancy curlicues.  And this is why I'm a poet).   

Anyhow, this led me to feel this....this feeling of being on the precipice.  I am applying for a leadership conference and one of the three essay questions is "what question are you currently holding about your life or vocation?"  This process of answering these questions right now is so exactly what I need.  This process of discernment, of questioning, or breathing into the place of no answers to find the true question -- this is where the bravery has brought me.

Because right now, like many in this country, I feel angry, and lost, and disheartened.  As I wrote in my last poem, there are so many questions I cannot answer.  I sent an email to a former colleague -- someone older and wiser than myself, telling her that I am disillusioned with our colleagues and our field.  "Where the hell are we?" I asked her. "What are we doing?  Are we all wrapped up in our ivory towers of academia, too busy writing articles to come out and talk about matters of importance?  We are in a position to do so much social good, to make strong statements and take strong positions on matters of social justice based on what we know, and we don't. If we do not find a way to speak, aren't we failing our clients and our profession?"

I don't expect to hear from her.  I have spent so long looking for, searching for someone to be the person who will guide or mentor or show me a way through this.  This person is not coming.  S/he is not here, and attempting to live into the word brave did not stir me to action.  It was not big enough.

A few months ago, in the midst of a total, crying, messy breakdown, I had something happen that had happened to me once before.  It's something that could make firmly agnostic me believe in God, if I were prone to such things: I heard a voice.  Not an external voice like Morgan Freeman voice of God moment.  Like, just WOAH.  There's that voice.  Like happened that one time before when I was sitting at that stoplight in Ohio.  And the voice said, "what if you are the one you have been waiting for?"

Fast forward to yesterday.  I'm driving to church, and these things happened in rapid succession:

(1) As I was thinking about what I want to say in that essay, and about all of the unanswered questions inside me, and about this uncomfortable place I am in, and about how painful change is, and about how bravery is too small, and about how I love the word vast, I heard that voice again - so clear, and definitive, and not my voice, and it would be creepy as hell if it was saying something weird, but it's not, it said the same thing -- it said, "you are the one you are waiting for."

(2) I looked down at my forearm, my hand grasping the steering wheel, and realized the reason I have not gotten the tattoo I desperately want is because I have been imagining it wrong.  I don't want the words on my back.  I want them where I can see them.  I need them where I can see them.  I need it on my forearm.   

(3) The inevitable panic of "YOU CAN'T GET A VISIBLE TATTOO" set in, and I squashed it.  This body is mine and I want to find out what it's like to live it, to own it, to inhabit it fully and completely.  I am the one I have been waiting for. 

I arrived at church, sat in the parking lot, sketched out the tattoo, and walked inside.

It's not that I believe in signs, but the service was asking the question: "What is the light that you have to offer the world?" "What does the world stand to lose if you hide your light?"  I laughed, because -- seriously?  And then I cried, because -- seriously?  And it just was.  This is how the universe is playing right now.  Throwing me ALL of the signs.  

When I was in college, way back when I was a junior in 2005, I had to read one of Anaïs Nin's books for my humanistic and existential psychology class.  Either in the book, or in the class, or in my reading about Nin, I encountered the quote, "And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."  I wrote it in the front of my notebook.  And since 2005, I have loved that quote.  I can't quite explain the way that quote just has been me and my life in so many ways -- or the ways I have hoped it would be, sometimes.  I have written that quote in journals, on my skin, in the fronts of books.  I have doodled it, zentangled it: it made 19 year old me feel hopeful.  It gave 24 year old me something to believe in.  It gives 31 year old me a sense of vastness, of blossoming, of expansion.

That quote is, of course, too much to say in a tattoo, unless you're going big.  So this is what I said instead.  This is the other side of all the bravery.

 The handwriting and overall design are mine.  The swirly design is found, but the words, the writing, the design -- it is mine.  On my body.  Turns out, I was the one I was waiting for. 

I wrote a poem last night that I will not share in its entirety -- but I will share the end, because I think it speaks to that place of precipice-standing -- to the risk, and the vastness, and the blossoming.

"...the light of my self cracks this body

open, leaving

broken wholeness in the wake of

destruction.  This body is not object.

Not function.  Not space to be filled or claimed.  It is

promise - vast and private, like

the whisper of dawn

just before it breaks

into morning."

There is so much that lies before us, as we stand here -- teetering on this precipice.  What if this is the day when the risk to blossom outweighs the risk of remaining tight in a bud?  Or maybe not the day, but a day?  One of many days, perhaps, when we make that choice?  What if we are the ones we have been waiting for?  What if this vast and private whisper is not destruction, but the promise-filled darkness of dawn?

I don't have answers -- but now, have a permanent reminder to risk the questions as they break into morning.

On questions and capes: A poem about post-election survival

On questions and capes: A poem about post-election survival

The cashier at the pharmacy verifies my name, address, date of birth,

looks me over and says, "Solomon, huh?

Is that Jewish?"

It is 3 weeks after the election.

We are standing in a Walgreens in a blue state

across the corner from where the

high school kids stood on election day with signs reading,

"build that wall" and "Hillary for Prison." We are

down the road from the Starbucks where I was lectured on

how young people will be the downfall of society because

we don't know any better, and up the street from the

house with the Confederate flag painted in its garage, from the

Trump sign that lights up in the dark, from the

pick-up truck with two Confederate flags flying off the back above the gun rack, from the

Safeway where men followed me to my car, tried to get in after me, where I

did not buy from the Kosher for Passover section because

a man in a Trump hat was in the aisle with me spouting ignorance and now I

wonder

why I am standing in Walgreens

trying to answer this question as

my mouth goes dry.

*****

Dr. Laura?

If Donald Trump is president, will he hate me?

Dr. Laura?

When Donald Trump runs the world, will he make people be cannibals?

Will they eat people with autism first?

Dr. Laura?

Is it okay to worry about Donald Trump?

Sometimes I can't sleep because I worry about him, like, about what he might do to my family.

Dr. Laura?

Will it be the end of the world when Donald Trump is president? 

Dr. Laura? 

Can I be a superhero and save the world from Donald Trump?  Sometimes I imagine that.

Dr. Laura?

I don't know how to be a superhero. 

I tried to fly once, but

I just falled down.

*****

Each session feels like a Bingo card of heartbreak:

a unique pattern of life on the margins.

I find newfound fear as the day's

headlines flash by.

Session 1:

White single father with mental illness raising teenage son with

disabilities on the Eastern Shore has to give up

a day of work to wait

for Medical Assistance transportation.

Session 2:

Muslim woman in hijab has twins with autism, works

nights to support them, about to lose her job due to

inability to find child care.

Session 3:

Non-English speaking, immigrant mother with

intellectual disability raising child with autism.

Session 4:

Black lesbian grandmothers, one with cancer, one an immigrant, raising

child with multiple disabilities on

food stamps in section 8 housing with a history of

multigenerational trauma.

Bingo.

*****

I receive an email:

"I don't understand why you're so upset.

Now is the time to send love and prayers and compassion."

I fire off a response:

"Fuck your prayers.

Now is the time to fight for the superheroes flying

across the margins."

*****
I feel so small in the face of the

resilience I sit across from.

What privilege it is to feel

shell-shocked and

curl into my

white, lesbian, half-Jewish shell when all day I

sit with people who only had a quarter shell to start with and it

leaks when it rains.

*****

Dr. Laura?

I was teaching my son to ride the bus.

He was going to do it himself.

Should I let him?  I'm scared.

Dr. Laura?

I want him to be able to work

but I don't know what people will say.

Have you seen all these hate crimes?

Dr. Laura?

He runs away from me in public.

He hugs strangers, he's

a grown man now.

A 14-year-old black boy.

What do we do?

Dr. Laura?

****

I spend days telling myself I cannot do this.

I cannot find my breath.

I ask myself: what if the next person you meet is the one the world is waiting for?

I give everyone capes in my mind so they are

flying as I

learn to ask the questions that will

imagine our survival.

//

Note: All clients portrayed above are fictionalized and/or composites of actual clients I see/have seen. 

No More

October is domestic violence awareness month, and I was asked to write a poem for a vigil for domestic and intimate partner violence tonight for a local organization (shout-out to Hopeworks, who does fantastic work!).

Do you know about the "No More" campaign?  The theme of tonight's vigil was "No More."  No More domestic violence.

I want to live in a world where there is no more domestic violence.  No more sexual assault.  No more abuse.  Let's say no more.  

No More

And the women say No More.

And the men say No More.

And the children and elders

and my trans-sisters and brothers

queer and straight, we

gather to grieve and rage and hold one another because this

is how we reclaim our lives.

We converse with silence and the echo of doubt

until we are hollowed.

Raw hearts rarely show the bleeding:

we arrive again with strangers who bring

the intimacy we crave and pocket

like poems. Some moments

are small enough to fit under our tongues, but we hold them like

beacons of hope.  This breath breathes

power into our lungs as we

fight to embody the subtle whispering of ourselves and

the weights we carry. 

Violence takes.

It takes air, and energy, and blood, and

life, and all we learned to live by.

We spend our days learning

the motions of moving our words from our shoes to our fists,

from our fists to our hearts,

from our hearts to our mouths.

We turn on our voicebox like a

sprinkler of truth-missiles;

tie our heartstrings to moonbeams to practice the art

of rising from darkness:

there is no prescription or miracle.

No love letter or checklist.

No law, or scripture, or prayer that rights this world,

there is only this-

the gravitational pull of your life to the moonbeams and the ways you rise.

The power of remembrance and owning your sanctity.

Candlelight, and murmurations of

the strength of survival

together.

A poem is so small  --

it is only words on a page, spoken and then

gone; I want to be large.

The vastness of my embodying reaching

out so I can expand to exist

beyond this:

take my hand and we will make

the moon.

Let’s beam her large,

together, rising holy into the darkness, saying:

hear me.

Believe me.

Value me.

Warrior with me.

Listen when I roar

when I whisper

when I beg and write

and pray:

No More.

Day 15: Grieving the war

I don't know how to explain the warzone I work in because

there are no tanks, or guns --

except for when there were, once, last year during the uprising after

Freddie Gray was killed and I

walked in to work past the National Guard lining the streets in

riot gear.

But it's not really about that because the warzone I work in is

the police problem and the

poverty problem and the

oppressed people problem and the

hungry children in a food desert problem, and the

shitty schools that do illegal things routinely problem, and the

no way out problem.

It's the "my house burned down in the snowstorm" warzone, and the

"I might get deported" warzone, and the

"they got rats in the daycare" warzone, and the

"don't speak the language and nobody gets me an interpreter" warzone, 

and the war of: "can't pay my BG&E bill," and "don't have a working car" and "got a kid with a disability" and "school keeps calling me to come get him so I lost my job."

And me --

most days I show up with a pen knife to the gun fight.

"With all due respect, ma'am," he told me,

"you say you understand that this is hard.

But you don't."

He's not wrong.

I can feel it in my bones, but I

will never have to live it.

I feel so

small, knowing there is not an

enough that can stop this

bleeding.

A patient arrived nearly half an hour late today.

He was pulled over by the police for speeding.

He left the session and I cried:

grateful he

made it alive. Praying he

made it home.

Allowing myself 5 minutes to

grieve the war.

Day 14: Unpoemed

Here's the thing: this isn't really a poem.  

Here's the other thing: this is my blog, and my poem, so I get to say what's going down...and tonight, I say this is as close as we're getting to a poem.  

There are things that are not poetic but can be poemed:

Earwigs.

Chapstick that melts in your purse.

The number of dead bugs collected in the light on my ceiling that I cannot remove.

The incessant barking of the dog next door.

And there are things that are poetic that cannot be poemed:

Your mother asking you to help take your grandfather's car.

Joint pain that radiates your body.

The raw hurt that comes when you read a person wrong --

or when you read them right, but hoped for more.

The aching wound that friendship leaves.

The ways our history lives in our bodies.

Feelings that float to the surface.

Looking for gratitude, and breathing only into the statement,

"I'm alive."

Day 13: Name This

Of course, I know this isn't technically day 13...but I needed to take two days off of poeming for lots of reasons.  So here's day 13 of my 30 days of poems...they just don't happen to be consecutive days.  

I shared this poem at church this morning.  I think it's actually the first time ever I have read a poem aloud and my body has not been shaking.  I liked that feeling.  

Name This

I have always been precise in my naming.

I want the just-right word at the just-right time:

I wield the power of my wording like a weapon.

Verbing nouns, changing phrases to make them new

and surprising, I move

to the matters of soul

heart-clenchingly quickly--

hold on, y'all.

This is how things get real.

See, as babies, our parents label our worlds:

"Do you see the light?"

"That's your shirt."

"Big yawn."

"You are so silly."

As toddlers, we ask the questions.

We point and show, and

each item is told to us over and over until

we can hold our world in our crumb-encrusted fingers.

My family cat's name was Coo Coo.

Coo Coo was one of my first words,

and everyone thought it was because

I loved the cat until, at age three

I told my mother that Coo Coo

was despicable.

I wonder how long it took me to find

the just-right word to name that, as playmates go, Coo Coo

was always a bit of a jerk.

I wonder if pride

surged through my three-year-old frame as I knew

I had found my just-right word, had

named the feeling exactly right, I

had spoken.

But just-right words are hard to find,

hard to use, hard to believe in;

naming our lives is not as easy as labeling

lights, and shirts, and

sometimes, I fall away to

solitude and quiet

un-naming of myself and my place, but wonder:

how do I name this worth?

this reclamation?

this embodying?

How do I name this way

I live my world?  I say

here is my heart. 

I named it Myself.

It is power.

It is existing beyond, it is

a word after

a word after

a word, it is naming:

here.  I am here,

holding my world in my hand.

Let me show you the color, the shape

the weight of it.

How heavy it can be.

Stay with me so I can

open my fingers.

Let me show you how beautiful it is

when it hits the light.

Day 12: Epigenetics

I don't know how many
lifetimes a child must
die through to end up
sitting in my office with
eyes like caverns that
echo:

a body is not big
enough to hold that
grief and so it
hollows
like a grave.

Day 11: Love letter from a flip-flop to the arpeggio: A story of unrequited love

Day 11/30

So...it's not that my creativity is waning...but...I maybe needed an idea of what to write tonight, so I went to Facebook again.  This time, I planned for tonight AND I planned for the future, because these poems are fun, and I figured maybe I will do one more if I get some good words...we'll see how the rest of the days go. 

At any rate, here was the word call: "Needed for two upcoming poem challenges: Four random things.  (I need concrete item type of things.  They can be random, but they need to be items.  Like toothbrush.  Or printer.  Or ferris wheel). 

As was the case yesterday, they did not disappoint.  Here is the list of words:

buggy whip, giraffe, tank top, Purple Pieman & Berry Bird Pop! Figure, key lime pie, archipelago, flip flop, tea pot, arpeggio, koala, febreeze spray, pool noodle, palm tree, vagina, clitoris, vulva, tissue, diet Dr. Pepper, trash can, peach, geode, flute, puppy, tail, pollywog, kombucha, water bottle, credit card, metro card, keys

With that in mind...the prompt is "write a love letter between two inanimate objects."  I'm thinking, of course, of Sarah Kay's amazing "Love Letter From a Toothbrush to a Bicycle Tire."  I took a stab at one a while ago -- "A love letter from the bell to the air."  

So from that amazing list of words above, the most obvious and only choice to me is to write...

Love letter from a flip-flop to the arpeggio: A story of unrequited love

I have loved you since first note.

Sitting on my shelf at Target,

waiting for my forever home, I was

practicing my monotone flips and flops, when you

came over the muzak-playing radio station in

soaring, trilling, rolling, resounding tones.

You sounded like

the first flip-flop weather day, like the

going to the beach day, like the

went to the park and did not step in dog poop day,

and made me want to sing my droning song with

new life.

One time, I tried to tune myself to your key:

hit my flop square against a foot I thought would be tuned to G, but it was

just a little sharp:
you flawless stream of music.

I love the way you

start out slow and then

become faster, almost

falling over yourself -- like I do when I run and my flips and flops smoosh together

becoming flops and flips

down and up, up and down --

we have so much in common, you and I.

Dear Arpeggio,

bounce with me along the paths of life.

Let us race up and down the scales together:

you holding tight my strap, and I, holding firmly to your notes, and together, we will create a masterpiece of tonal flips and flops --

you sweet chord.

Let us rest together gently upon your staff and I promise

to forever bring you home

to middle C.

Day 10: Bathe Me Glorious

Things I learned just now:

Some of my friends are jerks and they're lucky I love them anyway.  

I had no idea what to write tonight, so I posted this on Facebook:

"Help a sister you commits herself to stupid challenges out:
Give me 8 words.  One word per person.  Any word/form of word.  First 8 words win.  And go.
(2015s version of this challenge can be seen here: http://autodidactpoet.blogspot.com/2015/06/day-11-i-wish-for-you.html)

It started out innocently.  The first 4 words were:

Grace

Blue

Revolutionary

Fierce

And then came:

Terpsichorean

Wallaby

Deoxyribonucleic acid

And the final word: 

Elusive

Luckily, I have been playing this game for a VERY long time.  And the more people are assholes and give you RIDICULOUS words, the better this game becomes.  This poem?  20 minutes and done.

First: definitions.

Terpsichorean - of or relating to dancing

Deoxyribonucleic acid is just DNA all spelled out and fancy like.

And this fella is a wallaby.

Bathe Me Glorious

In the terpsichorean mystery of time,

evolution beckons us forward from cells to

wallabys, from

deoxyribonucleic acid to

sponges and

long-limbed teens with blue hair and

snails, and ferrets, and

grandfathers who don't remember your name - 

this life

is evolutionary chaos I sometimes don't

know how to survive.

Grace, 

ever elusive in your splendor

bathe me glorious in your revolutionary light

and draw me daringly into fierce

and furious

dancing.

Day 9: Worse Sins

Worse Sins

Because there are worse sins than a sick day, I

go to the beach to baptize myself alone.  With

only myself as witness, I

wash myself in sand and

dirty waters -

each wave a whispered promise

of absolution.

Day 8: Why I hold vigil every month witnessing Black lives lost to police violence and proclaiming that Black Lives Matter

So, I am really tired tonight in a soul-tired kind of way.  I have had a barely medicated migraine most of the day, and my heart and my soul is just tired.  The downside of writing a poem every day is that you don't have a lot of time to fix/think/work on things before you gotta move on.  This is one I would like to fix/think/work on, and probably will...but I need to turn out the light.  

I dislike churning out poems about "big issues" like this quickly, because it feels more likely that I'll get it wrong.  I kept getting anxious as I was writing it, thinking "you're going to say it wrong" and "that's not right!" and "you're going to mess it up and *insert catastrophic thought here*".

But I recently re-listened to Lauren Zuniga's poem - "Confessions of an Uneducated Queer," in which she says:

"I was afraid to write this because I didn't want to fuck it up.
Writing poems about things you don't really know a lot about can be very problematic
but not writing poems about things you're afraid to fuck up can also be very problematic.
The world is problematic -- please.  Fuck it up."

This is me - being willing to fuck it up in this big, problematic world.  

Why I hold vigil every month witnessing Black lives lost to police violence and proclaiming that Black Lives Matter

Because I am white.

Because I have work to do.

Because I do not always know how to do it.

Because people mostly honk, and wave, and drive.

Because I waved at a white woman and she flipped me off.

Because, even here, we have work to do.

Because it is living my faith.

Because it is full-bodied prayer.  

Because I do not know all of their names.

Because we do not have signs with all of their names.

Because we do not have enough people to hold signs with all of their names.

Because there are always more names.

Because I do not know all of their stories.

Because there are always more stories.

Because there are hearts behind the names and stories.

Because the world was robbed of the rest of their story.

Because a mother asked to take a picture with me.

Because I was holding a sign with her dead son's name.

Because I do not know how that interaction does not change a person.

Because every month something in me changes.

Because I need to be changed.

Because there are small black and brown faces in the back seats of cars who look with

wide eyes and do, or don't, understand why we're there and 

why we need to be.

Because they will understand one day.

Because I want those babies safe.

Because I want them to always come home alive.

Because I never want to hold a sign with their name on it.

Because in the next car there is a small white face in the back seat with

wide eyes who understands, or doesn't, but

will never need to.

Day 7: Telephone

I almost left this one untitled, because any title I can think of feels either too obvious or dramatic or overblown.  But I think this one works for me.  

Telephone

"I went to lunch with your grandfather and grandmother," he says.

I go still on my end of the phone line as I realize

this conversation is not the one I thought it was.

I pause to weigh my options.

"Don't you know your grandmother and grandfather?" he snaps.

"Grandfather," I address him gently, "Doris was my grandmother."

"No no.  Nope.  No.  That's wrong.  Lynn is your mother," he says.

I don't know who Lynn is. 

I wonder if he does.

"Did you have a good lunch?" I ask. 

He rambles about his turkey sandwich and ponders 

whether I know Rose while I breathe. 

I don't know Rose - turns out she's the lady at the bank.

I store this in my memory for later:

there is so much living in the details.

"After all these years you're finally telling me that your mother is my daughter?"

His voice rises such that I can't tell if he's joking.

"I'll be damned."

We laugh and - for a moment - my heart eases.

"Happy birthday, Grandfather."

"Yeah," he says.  "Thanks, hon."

"I love you," I say.

"Well that's nice to hear," he says

and silence falls between us.

I remind myself to breathe.

Day 6: Wild Thing

Last night in yoga, we did the pose below -- "wild thing" -- and it was beautiful, and powerful, and intense in a "HERE WORLD!  HERE IS MY HEART!" sort of way.  

Day 6/30 days of poems - check.  

Wild Thing

Sitting with this stillness is

too much of not enough tonight-

What are you protecting?

You wild thing:

breathe your untamed heart to freedom and

let her fly.

From yogajournal.com

Day 5: Anthem

Sigh.  I suck at titles.  Also, I seriously had to get through like 8 different throw away starts to get to this poem (which initially started with the line "I can't write this shit").

Writing tip 1: When you can't think of what to write, write what you can't write.  Then write.

Day 5 was a struggle.  But it's done. 

Anthem

Being a poet means

living edgelessly on the verge, always

feeling like you're

free-

falling through layers of life and line-breaks and

vulnerability and there are

so many poems I am too scared to write. 

There are words I

swallow like songs my mother sung me that will

kill me one day or

explode in poetic battle of rainstorm --

there are so many ways of fighting against a poem.

Pushing away the big words that invite fear and

working only with the smaller ones that will

coat the lining of your stomach -

this shit is real;

living is no joke and witnessing this through

poeming is

some sort of Fucked Up most days, but

I will write instead that

my body is an anthem I will learn to stand up for, so

I sweat from the outside in.

Let it pool in the cells between my ribcage to

make saltwater baths for the emotions to float on like the

Dead Sea, but

everything in me is the opposite --
like my ribcage is really a rib-liberation, and
saltwater makes everything sink;
like the Dead Sea is really alive and the

empty spaces are overflowing and

my heart makes breaking fall together --

there are so many ways of fighting against a poem:

so many ways of forgetting

what it feels like

to be alive.

Day 4: Holy Encompassing

Holy Encompassing

It's going to take me a long, long, LONG time to trust you, he said.

"Okay," I nodded.

Like maybe 10 months.  Or 8 months.  Or 12 months.  Or maybe longer, he warned.

I weighed this carefully, squinted my eyes a bit, nodded again. 

"That sounds reasonable," I said. 

"This isn't something we want to rush."

He glanced sideways and eyed me up with all 12 years of tough dontmesswithme secrets

and the words came pouring out-- slowly at first and then

all at once, like dark descends on nights without stars --

wholly encompassing breathtaking endings -- but somehow also

like breathing into the comfort of knowing that

here, where we stand

is also valid.

Day 3: Steps Before Self-Love

(1) I'm remembering that writing every day is really hard, and that sometimes I have a hard time letting go of my need for "perfection."  (And everyone says "sometimes?").

(2) Tonight did not go as planned.  This was written in about 20 minutes.  It's all I've got.  I'm going to have to be okay with that.  That's the point of this writing every day exercise.  

(3) Day 1 and 2 were much better poems.  If you didn't read them, you should probably read them instead.  Just sayin'.

Steps Before Self-Love

While scrolling Facebook: 43 Self-Care Practices for a Healthy Mind, Body, and Soul.

In the checkout aisle at Safeway: 15 Powerful Self-Care Tools You Can't Live Without.

In my email inbox: 12 Important Ways to Love Yourself

On the side of my news article about the latest dog food recall: 18 of the Most Important Self-Care Practices You Aren't Doing

Why the fuck are we shaming ourselves over self-care?

I'm wondering why I'm

supposed to be seducing myself, wondering how

I'm supposed to be getting into bed with me when

I have only just learned my name, and -

I'm not even to the point of

holding hands with me, much less

seeing me, loving me, and

what I want to know is what color my irises are on the inside, and

whether my heartbeat ever keeps time with the world,

I want to feel the way breathing

can be gentle next to me in ways I've

never let it be:

there are steps before self-love that no one wants to talk about.

Conversations that must be had before you can

enter into self-care but

before I lie

next to my self, I will touch her softly asking-

where does it hurt?

and we'll do nothing but

hold the aching

gently

in our hands. 

Day 2: Unsmall

Unsmall

We were friends the way 10-year-olds who don't fit
meld together into a unit of awkward by necessity. 

We didn't understand each other and didn't have to because 

we were 10 and didn't know the burdens we carried or 

how to name ourselves and our lives  - but it didn't matter
because we danced for the same reason
and knew it. 

I was the shy, bullied girl with too-big glasses; he, the only boy in dance class,

and we somehow fit into each other's space with an ease we knew did not just happen.

We got to know each other's quiet pauses. The ways his eyes would soften when he knew

things weren't good at home or

the costume did not fit or

they closed my fingers in the dressing room door - again, and

I knew the way he was practicing jumps when

things weren't good at home

or school

or anywhere

and we would lose ourselves in

who could jump higher or

who could pirouette longer and this

is why we danced.

Hey Buddy, he would say, and we would

sit on the steps where we

weren't supposed to be but

no one would stop us because together we were

invisible and invincible and

it was never love but I loved him in a way that made us

not small at a time when we were both

unseen: we could

dance each other large

if only for a moment and

what is love anyway but making each other

unsmall?

Life happens, in spite of unsmall love and

I haven't seen him for more years than I knew him, but

after 13 years, when I saw his mother's obituary, 

I knew I had to go.

He stands on the porch, smoking a cigarette

wearing a too-big suit and the weight of the world on his body.

Hey Buddy, I say.

He shakes his head like he used to and his eyes go soft.

It's been so many years, he says.

I hug him tight, his shoulders broader than at 17;
I feel so small against his frame.

I can't believe you came, he says, and his voice

cracks under the weight.

I hold him with my eyes and know this love
can still make us unsmall and

for a moment

we are there, 

dancing each other large.

Day 1: Undoing

Okay, y'all.  So, it's time.  For real.  I need to get my butt in gear and write actual words on an actual page.  So there will be 30 days of writing.  

For real.  I'm not even kidding a little bit.  You have my permission to kick me if I am not writing.  

Here is day one.  

Undoing

Some days I wear my body like broken glass.

Crumbled shatterings create

splintered mosaics inside this frame and I

thank god for the ways gravity

and bones hold my undoing together.

And some days

I wear my body like thunderstorm.

The oppressive weight of cloud hangs over my chest and rips

thunder through me -

there is danger

in the way I wear this rippling creation of a being.

I wear this body heavy the way

carrying a river is heavy:

it is beautiful

and deep as it silently

erodes its own

edges.

And some days --some days

I remember this body is not

a thing to be worn.

Not burden, not bruise,

not load to contend with.

This body is not

pieces glued together forming this

heart-full being of human.

See - a tree does not wear herself differently

because the wind has blown.

Does not shame herself when

lightning scars her skin,

when seasons leave her bare,

when insects bore her leaves  --

she lives her physical body without

shrinking.

Some day,

I will

live

this body.