Tag: love letters

Poetry, Self-Reflection

A Color Darker Than Black

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Sky

These last 14 days without my father have been the hardest days I’ve experienced in a long time.  I’ve been a witness to death before, but this one is a new breed of aching.  It’s a depression that strikes at any moment.  It takes my breath away and then fills my burning eyes with salty tears that I thought were dried up. My thoughts are consistently scattered and I am leaping from one feeling to the next, like bullfrogs on lily pads, careful not to fall into the water.

There is so much comfort in my world that there have been moments where I feel like I could become a lighthouse directing all around me to the beacon of love itself.  And then almost instantly, my heart collapses and I feel cold metal sludging through my veins, fearful I will be numb forever.

My faith is unwavering though and I know that I have seen darker hours.  And even if I hadn’t, I realize my purpose is to be a vessel for the universe to use as she wishes.  I am a constant student, unlearning everything all day long so that I can become empty for her to fill me up again and again. Bring me pain, bring me beauty, lead me where you need me.

My dad is a cloud and he turned into snow – he continued on to his next and newest form.  A form that is unbeknownst to me. But in my reflections of him, I feel his peace, his lightness of heart, his youth and above all – his love.  As a friend recently said to me, “…there would be no day at all without love. There’d certainly be no night. Or any other infinite thing.”

My human mind can’t comprehend why pain is necessary, why “bad things happen to good people” or why there can be so much savagery in the world – but I do understand balance. I see the pendulum. I’ve swung from one extreme into love and light. Everything is temporary, and so is this hurt. I have a choice to live well and love through the ache and I will always side with love and allow the brilliant universe to continue to show me the way.

A Color Darker Than Black
I dreamed of driving alone in the desert
taking pictures of shadows.
I never expected to know people.
Loneliness felt like enough until it wasn’t.
I was enough until I wasn’t.
I am not weak in my worship, oh world.
My eyes are simply weighted and my body does not feel of my own.
Lead me, use me and I will grow vibrantly like a wild tiger lily.
No explanations required.
Venus has had fewer men than I.
Speaking their words, fueling their desire with my primal fire.
Still, the empty hollow in my chest begs
Whimpering and broken I plead for peace
Not yet ready, there is a color darker than black.
Clawing and grasping for breath this darling girl has resilience.
You see, I am a time traveler.
I can see all of the parallel universes, the past expressions,
the future is not unknown – it is written.
This blackness does not hurt me
it wets my appetite and forgetfully reveals the opposite side of the spectrum –
the blinding, effervescent light.
A kaleidoscope of color – timeless, limitless.
Will you feel it all with me?
Sit by my fireside,
and read the most elegant love letter ever written.

Poetry

Primordial Artist

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Primordial Artist
The Macrocosm, my Mother.
She bore us and sang to us as children.
Her reminiscent and nostalgic wind still guides me home.
She is a true creature of creation.
The primordial artist.
Her imagination, the DNA,
Within every consciousness.
I want to love in a way that makes my Mother proud.
My muse, my maker,
I see your untranslatable scribes etched into my walls.
I hear your bird’s song.
Voiceless and wordless I impatiently await your lectures.
Show me your allegiance to life.

Poetry

Radio Stations

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Moonlit Skies

Radio Stations
I can feel your dreams and breath so heavy
like a child on a teeter-totter.
Trying to balance but the sway from floor to sky keeps beckoning.
Skin humming from the day,
sunshine still glowing in the warmth of your long, raven hair.
Muscles give way to the weight of the room,
A room filled with unease, unrest…
A love abounding with innocence,
wistfulness and all-encompassing.
Enough to blanket the starry ceiling
flickering around me like a shaken snow globe.
A familiar and frequent reverie.
You’re my favorite radio station.

Poetry, Self-Reflection

A sober, slow-burning love

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The Boy Who Never Sleeps

I was hospitalized recently.  After 9 hours of tests, scans and lotsssss of morphine, it was determined that I had a ruptured ovarian cyst.  (Didn’t even know I had a cyst.)  (Also, didn’t know how painful a rupture could be! Answer: V.E.R.Y.)  The experience left me dazed, dizzy and drunk, likely from the morphine.  But weirdly enough, after feeling scared during a few points throughout the day, I left with a strange feeling of sadness that it wasn’t something worse.

I sat on this over the last week and went through a myriad of questions to understand why I felt that way.  Did I want pity from people?  Do I want to be a martyr?  Why would I selfishly want for something worse?  I’ve found my answer – I wanted to know what was next. What happens after this?  What is the continuation of our human existence?  I’m so excited to learn that answer that I felt impatient.

I have tried to commit suicide 3 times now.  Each time, my life had been saved only by the grace of a higher power, and not by a mishap on my end.  Fortunately, I have spent years in therapy, group sessions and additionally I have spent years mentoring and counseling young girls (and some boys) on depression and how to overcome childhood adversity. So my suicidal days are long behind me.  Knowing this about myself, I was eager to learn why my curiosity for death came back, but in a new form.

I like the sentiment “I’d rather die 10 minutes early than 10 years too late,”  but it doesn’t completely apply to how I feel.  I am ready when the universe deems me ready.  On my last attempt with suicide, I remember looking up at the sky in a nearly blacked-out state saying, “I get it, you win.”  And I meant that 100%.  I am powerless over my own death.  The universe, God, my higher power, Mother Earth – the Architect – directed me down a challenging, beautiful, tragic, brilliant path and I am forever grateful for every day I wake.  I am also grateful for my abnormal and unexpected desire to understand death as it’s enabled me to live with no fear.  My fearlessness and resilience are two of my favorite attributes of myself.

I wrote a post last year, “Accepting Death & Being Rewarded with Life,” where I talk about the bliss of owning your own life and no longer being beholden to your death.  I encourage all who read this to try contemplating their own death for a little bit to see what fears, notions, and stirrings come up.  Only when we ask questions and seek answers will we know the depths of ourselves. Stay curious my friends.

(I wrote this poem two days after my hospital stay.)

A Slow-Burn
Please don’t forget.
I know your memory flickers like an old tallow candle.
A strong, vibrant burn.
Pure without smoke, but with one clever gust –
Extinguished.
Longing to light a room once more.
But don’t forget this one.
Delicate caresses from tender hands.
Dizzying, drunken cells excited, heated,
Fireflies born between them.
Please don’t forget.
A tear fell from your left eye as a strand of your curled strawberry hair was tucked gently behind your ever-eager and listening ear.
You were frightened but he was there.
Allowing a soft brush alongside the curve of your cheek and down the jaw,
Eyes meeting only briefly in the dimly lit 3am apartment.
Recall, be certain, do not alter this one.
It’s innocent.
Comforted by your ancestry, affectionate solicitude.
His fountain streaming into your blood and circulating through thoughts and daydreams.
Never waking, forever wanting,
Another foggy ocean night.
Please don’t forget the harmonies of your heartbeats, the rhythm and pulse, raising and lowering your heavy head upon his sleepy chest.
His hand lowered slowly,
Drifting, drifting, drifting…
Dreaming of his moonlit ballerina in the sand.
His eyes, his hands, his thoughts pulling you in, holding at a distance.
Unrequited or not, the sky is twinkling with his songs,
And your hands are filled with stars.
The dance, the kindness, the faithful hearts that are never to be misjudged.
Too true the intentions to have standoffish defenses –
Love is a flower and he is your garden.
Thankful and enraptured that you’re allowed to love him
But whatever you do,
Don’t forget –
This is a sober love.
One without surrender,
The kind that is forever patient and requiring protection.
Like your slow-burning memory and its glass hurricane against the harsh winter winds.

 

 

 

Poetry, Self-Reflection

Heaven My Home

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SantaMonicaTrees

I moved again this weekend!  This was my 20th move in 12 years.  Surprisingly enough, or unsurprisingly enough, depending on how well you know me, this will likely not be my last move either.  However, it is such a beautiful next step on my journey.  No longer in an apartment, I have settled into a quiet suburban neighborhood with a middle school field right across from my adorable duplex.  (It’s basically a house that has been split into two units.)

Our neighbors are all so welcoming and I couldn’t be more grateful.  We’ve received mint from our new friends garden, another neighbor, and her husband of 34 years, helped us move in our heavy furniture when they saw me panting and struggling to carry it on our front lawn and our closest duplex neighbors are an adorable young couple expecting their first little one.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the word “home” lately.  Its definition is a fairly clear statement that ‘it’s where one lives’.  But humans, as a species, have defined a home as something so much more than that.  My home growing up was chaotic and turbulent and oftentimes not where I wanted to be – so I’ve spent 12 years searching for what I considered and expected a home to feel like.  A safe, sacred and warm place filled with love, intention, gentleness, and welcoming.  A refuge for friends or for passersby.  Food, tea, compassion, kittens, and blankets abound!

But no matter how beautiful the decorative pillow accents or the walnut mid-century modern pieces are, there has been one learning that has taken me these 12 years to discover.  This Earth, in all of her magnificence, glory, and wonder is my home.  With her creaking floors and high ceilings, her bright open windows all the way to her sometimes tilted foundation. I can move to any place in this world and be at home – and I’m so glad I’ve learned this.

Laying in the Redwood Forest
Heaven isn’t far, it’s simple to see,
Embraced by song, your skin, stars dangling,
A sparkling symphony.
To touch your hand and to make a promise,
Planting intentions, wishes, kisses.
Forever, represented as a redwood tree.
Growing and expanding the uncomfortable new roots make way in the soil.
Bursting open, the sprigs.
Seeking sunshine.
Carrying nourishment from the roots,
Gathering golden light,
Dancing in the divine of creation,
Of new life.
Heaven is a word.
But I am at home in your forest.

Poetry

Lullaby

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I am so exhausted.  I have had crippling nightmares & night terrors since I was a young girl.  In large part due to the trauma, but I do wish it would let me rest.  Nowadays, mostly, my sleep has improved – but for the last month, it has regressed.  I feel a lot of fear while falling asleep, or my mind just won’t settle.  Last night, it stirred and daydreamed and created elaborate scenarios that will never come to pass.  Here’s to the children that never received lullabies, the sleepless and the weary.

Morning Kisses
My evening primrose.  I am laying in the grass of your dreams while you are soaking in lavender.

Rest your heavy head, close your almond eyes and breath in my fantasy of forever youth, the joy of illumination from the moon that sits too low.

One day my indirect poetic prose will uncover the words to tell you, my love, how I kiss all the children before I fall asleep.

Until then, good morning.

Poetry

The Big Bang

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MOONLIGHT ASSIGNMENT

The Big Bang
Exposed my senses, to a new form of touch.
I know you.
Discovered by a miracle.
God, thank you for his planet’s gravity,
Pulling me in and around – like a daughter and her maypole.
Skipping, head tilting
Curls fall and sway down the back.
Eyes to the skies – sun-kissed freckles.
Spinning closer to his center,
Feet grazing the grass
As comets join the carpool lane.
I am the satellite, the astronomer, I am a cosmonaut orbiting.
Gravity, the seductress and her draw,
Attracting the planets like a sirens song –
The girl to her flowers and decorated ribbons.
Ever dreaming of the collapse,
A solar nebula from gravities divine intervention.
The creation of a sun,
A kiss.
Gentle, unspoken, wistful and craved.
Dancing in celebration of summer.
To be the rings around Saturn,
The moon to Earth.
To be closer to her.
Inertia coursing through their veins,
Running wild the ribbon
Pulling tighter.
Meteor showers and shooting stars revolving
Flowers and poplar seeds floating in the vacuum of intergalactic space.
Fingerprints, carbon footprints painted on my body
I miss you.
Even though you are right beside me.
“I love you” whispered in light years.
Universal charm – this magnificent attraction.