Finally the fog

Muscles buzz secrets
Deep into her sorrow bones
Fog curls around her

Bloody feet, dragging
Her body is long and strong
Like an Amazon

Her hair is matted
With sweat?  Blood?  Irrelevant
She's no ornament

Warrior, survivor
Mother, wife, creator
She exhales.  Deeply

A breath of living
Full of tiny hope raindrops
A sigh as large as

Thunder while she drags
her iron Sword beside her
Carving small cold canyons

Into the lush land
Made fertile with her salty
tears, bits of her flesh, the seed

Waiting for the kiss
Of sunlight to awaken
With living writhing desire

The parts which, even
Now lay dormant, curled, ready
To send down the roots

So below, above
Seeing strength from inside
looks a lot like love

The fog begins to clear
There's more than one way
to fight...

The same as you

Who are you?
It's hard to say, for sure...
I know I am

A searcher
Looking for, if not the right path,
A lovely one

A teacher
Pulling laughing hearts under my wings
To fill with courage and curiosity

A mother
Fumbling along with hugs
Hiccups and band-aid kisses
Wondering when the squabbling stops

An American white woman
Attempting to amplify the voices
Of my black, brown, poor(er), differently able,
gender nonconforming, rainbow of sexual
identity brothers and sisters

Who are you?
It's hard to say for sure...

I do, however, know a thing or two...

I am the breeze
I am the dust that blows within it
I am your tears and mine melted, melded
I am the muscles fibers fusing
                                                 As you pump your legs pushing yourself always forward
I am the dreams, both realized and broken
I am the caterpillar AND the butterfly
I am the soil, seed, and pine tree
I am the breeze and the dust that blows within it

I am love
             

Interwoven

When I breathe in

I breathe in you

Particles and pieces of

Dust wrapped in energy

Set fire with passion

Untouched

When I breathe out

I breathe out fear

Releasing the rage of rapes

And brain cells gone rogue,

Turning into an internal zombie

Devouring

When I breathe in

I breathe in you

Stardust recalled shadows and

Silent echoes

Of unseen heartbeats

Silenced

When I breathe out

I breathe out hope

Ribbons of heart screams

Woven tightly

Into decorative ropes

Binding

Me to you 

Us to 

Every other

Us

That ever was

Breathe in

Breathe out

Breathe in

Breathe out

We not only belong to each other

We ARE each other

At least that

We are gathering
    for no solutions
beyond the hearing,
sparkling beauty between each shared
story.

The slightly louder
exhalation
that signals
speech crawling slowly
up the larynx

We gather
At least that

I have invisible
detailed white wings
and I wrap them
around the circle
of us

Without solutions...
At least that.

Words whispered
or clearly articulated
eyes down cast
Stories that hid, crumpled in
chests brought forth
and flattened out
with trembling fingers

We hear you
At least that

I open my heart
and pull the blackness
out of you,
pull as hard as I can
and center it into
my wide open
Till the tears grow heavy
and finally dance for you

In shared unsure motion toward each other

At least that.

I AM

At night
She whispers
Fiercely in my ear
"Remember you are beautiful
Beyond compare. You are strong
And brave and everything you need to be..."

The words are arrow bound and aimed
To fill the wounds
Left gaping
Dripping...no,
Weeping

Weeping unlike willows
Swaying softly, a hundred
Floating dancers spinning
And entwining
Always together
The branches in bunches

My tears are dry
Solitary
Swallowed
Swelling to bursting
Pushing muscles and words
To say things
Do things

Wrong things
Things I watch myself doing
Saying
A fly perched on the wall beside myself
Never loud enough to be heard
Unable to stop the things
I shouldn't be
Completing

And so they happen
And the whisper words I send my way
Are the poison swords
Stabbing
No need to repeat them
Fill in the blanks as you see fit

Which is why I need her
This her that is finally me
This Her who is finally more
On my own side
And the darkness calms things
So that

At night
She/me/I can whisper
Fiercely in my (own) ear
"Remember you are (I am) beautiful
Beyond compare. You are (I am)strong
And brave and everything you (I) need (me) to be..."

I Am.

Not actually alone

What is today,

Is yesterday,

And all the movements we make

Are melted into ones that swayed before

5 years

5 months

5 minutes

Time torn away from what he accidentally

Thought

Might be

Trips directly into

The tardis

And there is no forward or back

Here or there

The girl who waits

Waits forever and never began

The heart that love rent

Is reformed

Remolded

And ripped apart to bleed

Again

And so he breathes

Again

On swollen broken feet

He takes a baby step

And chooses to challenge the idea

That baby steps

Mean moving forward

I can climb a stool to sit upon

Taking baby steps

Upon each rung.

Rest.  Resting is good

Resetting

There is a black and blurry moment

Every now and then

Full of chocolate

Wine

Tears

Too much sleep

Not enough sleep

Snapping and snarling

Hair pulling and refusing to make anything

For dinner

Reset

Until the cord no longer plugs in

Till the metal is bent

A spur upon the bones of your spine

Causing scoliosis

Curving the part of you

Meant to structure you

Strong and straight and tall

There are still baby steps

Through the mud

While winds whistle the rustling rub

Of bending bark

On aging window panes

Not quite

Like fingernails upon the length

Of old blackboards

But close

5 years

5 months

5 minutes

Time torn away from what he accidentally

Thought

Might be

Trips directly into

The time machine

And all that ever was

And all that ever will be

Billows through the blender

Of the soul

Spinning and whirring

Till one thing

Is firmly fused

Into

Every

Other

Thing

That ever was or will be

Our stories

No matter how heavy

Are never

Entirely

new

Our stories spin together

A child died
I'd never met him

A woman far too young
faces a demon called cancer
squirming its bastard way
into her brain

Brave
Strong

I think about these concepts often

When I was 23
my Women's Study/History professor
held a Santaria celebration
to usher in the new year.
I had my first tarot card reading there
as everyone left

a woman older than me sat beside me
we had one card pulled
and two polar opposite reactions
to the image of a solitary woman
in a plowed field
barefoot,
arms down and palms forward
she faced away into the distance.

She saw sorrow
I saw courage, strength

I think, now, I see both

My nails are trimmed short
and still I wake up
with random scratches on my hands

I've been a widow for almost 5 years
I wonder if it's silly to search
for a mostly safe place

I notice how odd it is
that the feelings I feel are simultaneously
tiny
and all of the universe
folded into my melting, mourning mind

For 44 years I have been practicing breathing
I am finally mastering the skill
in fits and starts

Enough so that I am strong enough to choose
curiosity
even when my breath hitches in sobs and stuttering tears

While foundations rumble.

My biggest secret and my deepest fear?

I am
exhausted.

So exhausted

And still
when I close my eyes
remember to breathe
I feel them

The child who died
The woman attacked by cancer
My husband dead five years

there are waves, and birds, breezes and songs
dreams and
things I can't explain

We are connected
we are woven

So I silently sing a secret whisper
and ask the nothing
the vibrates with it all

to hold me up
a little while longer