I grow weary of the worlds I carry. The ones I allowed others to create for me, the ones I created for myself to appease those so uncomfortable with the irrepressible  parts of me. There are truths of me that I haven’t shown in the centuries I have existed since I was small.

I hear the clock ticking, the grains of sand whispering to me that I have to move now. I have to do more than stand at the edge of this precipice waiting for permission to exhale the dust of immobility. To take my first free breath, and laugh joyously before leaping into the next whatever.

I still hear clearly the admonishments to be still, be quiet, don’t question, calm down, don’t laugh so loud, cry so much, smile so freely. Each one a binding, a board to be nailed, a bar to be placed at the windows where my soul was kept…

She had been asleep a lifetime. Waiting to be awakened, her Pandora’s box of dreams locked up tight in the dark corner. She didn’t remember now what little poisonous prick had caused her unnatural sleep, and just as forgotten was the prince that was supposed to kiss her awake for her life to begin. She remembered asking “mirror, mirror…” and couldn’t remember why that had been so important to her since she knew, deep down, that she was the mirror.

She realized slowly over eons, that we were all sleeping beauties waiting to rise and fulfill our fairy tales, but we had all been taught to wait, to endure, to accept. She grew tired of lying there, all chaste and lovely, while the world of possibilities danced around her ivory tower. Some were waiting patiently to be loved, she knew, but in her opinion, she thought she should just get up and…

What if, during these apparently disturbing times of unrest, there was no one willing to smile for a moment? What if, during the storm of what’s coming, raining all over what is, there was no one to point out the rainbow of hope? What if the morning news kept beating us with political screw ups and forgot to share the stories of triumph, hope and perseverance? What if all we could see was the endless desert, blinded from seeing the beauty of the sunrise or sunset, it’s simplicity, or simply became numb to the dreams inspired by the flowers brave enough to bloom there?

I am weary and heartsick of being trapped in the quicksand of pessimism, discontent, and disbelief in humanity that I find myself surrounded with. Fighting against those who perpetuate this only causes their grip to become stronger, and me to sink faster into a depression I am…

Sometimes the death of who you are is not dramatic. There is no impact of twisting metal, or fist to your flesh. It may not be a heroic effort gone wrong, or a fistful of pills. It may not be due to an unforgivable drive by shooting, a robbery gone wrong or a slash too deep in your wrists. Sometimes you just watch yourself die; bloodlessly, silently, without a single tear.

And yet you’re still breathing.

You didn’t fight the quicksand as it sucked you down in the fine and infinite grains of sand-made of becoming less-one moment at a time. You let it swallow you as a frog lets itself boil to death degree by numbing degree, unaware of it’s impending demise until it’s too late to hop to freedom.

And you’re still boiling.

You lie with your life, with your words, with your smile, as your soul rests…

If you love someone,

you must look beyond

how you believe

you should love them,

lay aside your assumptions

of what you think they should accept,

step outside of yourself

and what you’ve been led to believe,

and see them as they are.

Honor their boundaries,

let them come to you freely,

respect the private places

of their soul

and let your quiet calm call forth

the pieces they can share

without pain.

If you love them don’t assume

that making yourself feel better

gives them what they need

from you,

don’t disguise self gratification

as selfless gifting,

sacrifice your ego to give them

the safe place

they’ve never had from another.

If you love them,

let your hands

be open and still,

your heart softly welcoming

and your eyes

free of judgment.

If you love them, look beyond

your own reflection

in their eyes and see them,

with a heart

First of all, let me confess that I quit writing for over 20 years because I allowed someone’s feelings to carry more weight than my own. I looked into their judgement bearing eyes and tossed my writing in the bottom drawer where it stayed, gathering dust.

By doing so, I suffocated the part of me that was real, the truth of me, the softest part of my heart. I dimmed the light, shelved the dreams, let the fire go cold. No poetry flowed from within onto waiting paper, no stories of Warrior Queens, or howling Wolves, or love overcoming, or the victory of freedom were told, in epic fashion, by the clicks of my keyboard.

After years of that, my soul became one long silent scream of fury.

I will not tell you whose words cracked my heart like an egg finely fractured without breaking open. He would not appreciate the attention. But…

I have written the guts of my heart as long as I have memory of the ability to write. I write because I have to speak even when I have no voice. I write because I need to be heard, even if it’s in the silence of my own world. I write because it is the safest expression of my soul, of everything I am or hope to be. It is what I do when communication is imperative to the continuation of a relationship.

Because people interrupt. They talk over you, they manipulate your words to work for their benefit in their twisted little minds. They mis-under-hear you. They paint their own meaning in milli-seconds and obliterate your truth with their own means to an end. They take the words from your breaking heart and use them as a weapon against you and themselves at the same time-because they don’t…