eve eve eve, with no need to apologize

i don't have normal words.

i have acrostic poems and sketches and ribbons of choruses dancing the gray-sky winds.

i have 1,000 homes and healing hips.

i have my mind and the chance for existentialism or grins.

i have the gift of what's come from giving up on where i'm from. trying less to impress. trying true to breathe through the anxiety of not needing to be somebody.

i have coffee, black and bitter.

i have books, better and better.

i have chest-swollen-thanks under my sweater.

i have moon-bright-trust tucked under cover.

i have a chastity belt around my bruised bottom and a sense of safety even though i'm broken.

i have thank you's overdue and your welcome's i haven't felt through.

i have more spirals than i can count.

i have sacred memories i won't write about.

i have mirrors and mirrors and mirrors of love.

i have the wild above and the thick tangled below.

the center throws of now all dancing around my body like flames of infinity i don't need to control.

find me in awe, down on my knees, praying please please please:

shout yes across the ether, and yes into my weathered heart.

yes to the ache in me that pleads to break free from humanity.

find me whispering: this, this, this is it.

stay. it's all okay.

tenderness. cracks. new growth. laughs.

a strange freedom from longing.

a weird sense of belonging

to myself.

small child, still wild, ever-allowed to make messy mistakes and infinite retakes.

all for the sake of feeling at home in myself.

i hold the wealth.

there's nowhere to go.

stay. there's a way to be strong and simple here.

there's a way to clear the need to be anything but free.

fall.
fall.
fall.

love calls me to my natural height.

tall.
small.
tall.
small.
tall.

through the love lens

i am neither
one nor all
but the strange
falling motion of
acknowledgment
and now.

promises

weave a story
with your strong hands
in my wild hair

tell me something
untrue
and unbuttoning--
drenched with wanting,
elongated

i've mostly sworn myself off promising,
but i promise
i'll stay open to
considering your sweet nothings

not that you're a liar,
just that words
are as impossible
as love
and i speak more in the language of
labor and hands:
grabbing hold
clenching skin
punching in
time after time after time--

muscles so controlled
they learn
how to stitch
and stay--
or at least
make falling away
look graceful



***



i'm hungry, now
with no energy to spare deliberating

i will feed myself
until i become round and full of promise
big enough
to keep

if you wanted to know my spirit

if you wanted to know my spirit
i'd give you a jar and say:

mix all my paints with water
turn me mud-brown, mutt-like
let no one know where i'm from by sight

call me a gorgeous indistinguishable everything
call me singing hallelujah off tune
call me just like you: special matter, transmuting 
unable to untangle 

all these pigments
and roots

hallelu
hallelu
hallelu

how do i remember?

how do i remember candle light
or things that move best in the dark--
glowless with no one watching from a globe's-length away?

how do i remember ribs
quiet breathing
pressed into ribs
and my hand not reaching for confirmation that i exist
beyond this?

how do i remember being held--
mother's touch like a slow rush of love
across my brow?

how do i remember being happy being nothing?

nothing remembering nothing
and the smell of wick
come unlit
smoke staining the air
before it disappears
the moment clears
and temptation smears every corner of my mind

i can't hide from the glow even though
i've locked myself out of my digital house

i still press my finger to the
round-center-doorbell
of everything
waiting for something to answer
like a mother, or a prayer

forgetting what it's like to go home to myself
when no one's home

how do i remember to close?
so i can remember to open?

the long ache of longing
that snakes into belonging
only when i hold it like a mother
or a lover
holds heaven under covers
still and steady
through the night

rebirth update.

this rebirth business. it's like one heaving exhale at a time. roaring. sweating. in-the-zone insanity. thrilling. terrifying. electrifying. exhausting. 

then balmy slimy smiley newness.

i'm pretty sure something died. then something new shot through. (but declarations and words in general have me feeling quite uneasy these days.)

"just keep going" it is.

ps--i do love portland. so so much.