trapeze swinger

please, remember me, happily,

by the rosebush laughing

with bruises on my chin, the time when

we counted every black car passing

your house beneath the hill, and up until

someone caught us in the kitchen

with maps, a mountain range, a piggy bank

a vision too removed to mention

and please remember me, at Halloween

making fools of all the neighbours

our faces painted white, by midnight

we'd forgotten one another

and when the morning came I was ashamed

only now it seems so silly

that season left the world and then returned

and now you're lit up by the city

and please remember me, as in the dream

we had as rug-burned babies

among the fallen trees and fast asleep

beside the lions and the ladies

that called you what you like and even might

give a gift for your behaviour:

a fleeting chance to see a trapeze-

swinger high as any saviour

i want to hear jazz with my eyes closed
and dig my toes into the sand dancing
i want to climb to the summit and yell
and sleep under the stars
i want to laugh my head off and play marbles
and sleep in and eat croissants in bed with marmalade
and spill coffee and wear lace
and trip holding your hand
because i am listening so closely.

i think we are negative in habit.

how easy it is to be affected by one negative comment than be affected by many positive ones. i see it in myself. i will have a great day and something small will happen that will turn it all around.

this is my new resolution. to let go easier, to move on and to dwell on the beauty and good of each day. so often im rushing around and dreaming up what comes next, i miss all the good in front of me.

i want to trip holding your hand
because i am listening so closely.

forgotten among the lilies....

i abandoned and forgot myself
....
leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies
- st. john of the cross

we have all been known from the very start.

our eye colour, our hair line, our jawline, the shape of our big toe, the tone of our voice. these things have been designed from the very beginning. what kind of music we listen to. the sort of skirt that looks good. the sort of shirt that fits right. we have been made to find these things for ourselves and take them in as ours, like adopted children: habits, hobbies, idiosyncrasies, gestures, moods, tastes, tendencies, worries. we are all these things. they have been put in us for good measure.
perhaps we don't like what we see: our shapeless hair, our bony legs, our shoe size, our dimples, our knuckles too big, our eating habits, our disposition. we have disclosed these things in secret, likes and dislikes, behind closed doors with locks, our lonely rooms, our messy desks, our empty hearts, our sudden bursts of energy, our sudden bouts of depression.
don't worry.
put away your mirrors and your beauty magazines and your books on tape. there is someone right here who knows you more than you do, who is making room on the couch, who is fixing a meal, who is putting on your favourite record, who is listening intently to what you have to say, who is standing there with you, face to face, hand to hand, eye to eye, mouth to mouth. there is no space left uncovered.
[there is nothing about you they don't love.]
- sufjan stevens

journal of a solitude

i am here alone for the first time in weeks, to take up 'real' life again at last. that is what is strange - that friends, even passionate love, are not my real life unless there is time alone in which to explore and to discover what is happening or has happened.
- may sarton

i think it will be a very sad journey...

how tragic would it be to go through life not being fully myself and therefore not FULLY alive ?
we change ourselves to be loved and yet we never give ourselves the chance to be completely and wholly loved for who we are, exactly as we are made.

i want to treat myself with love and know that i am loved fully for exactly who i am.
i want to stop covering, shifting, prettying up, and hiding up parts of me.

i want to be loved for me.

"i must ask myself 'what am i trying to be that i already am?'
if i don't love those parts of me, the tucked in sucked in silent parts...
i think it will be a very sad journey, and a pathetic waste of time.
'if you're not yourself, who will be?'"
- sabrina ward harrison

the way it goes

so much is spoken in what is left unsaid
i'm leaning in to hear the whisper of your silence
barely audible
and i wonder if its worth the risk to ask
or if i should just allow the way it goes

what do you carry ?

i carry with me

i carry with me a broken blue wallet
i carry with me chicken pox scars on my eyelid and a pink dot on my lip
i carry with me old receipts that i am too lazy to throw out
i carry memories of late night talks and boat rides at the cottage
i carry my mother's hair colour and my father's laugh

i carry a cell phone with hundreds of names of people i've met
i carry with me most, but not all, of my heart
i carry with me three sisters and time spent laughing at movie lines
i carry a ring from thailand
i carry all the houses i've ever lived in, and the place i call home

i carry hope and fear and confusion and joy
i carry my mother's compassion and my father's generosity
i carry broken dreams and endings
i carry the true and the questions


what do you carry ?

change

change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains of dawn
it comes like the stealthy perfume of wild flowers hidden in the grass
- john steinbeck

today i was talking with my friend mark about change and the tension and anxiety that comes before you know a big change is about to occur.
and how i've learnt that when i feel this tension within me to expect a change in the future, before even knowing what it may be about.
mark said its funny how as we grow older we learn about ourselves and almost get to know ourselves better, that you know why you feel a certain way or what is causing certain emotions.
i'm ready for the change that is ahead of me.
i'm ready to flip over and rearrange and shift pieces in my life. to take who i have become and build on to parts and drop others. to grow into someone more resembling myself, at the core.
i once read someone write "it has been a year of losses, but i like who i have become".

rise again, nod to me, shout !

there comes a time where we must
wash the gum from our eyes
and dress ourselves for the dazzle of the light.

long have you timidly waded
holding a plank by the shore
now i will you to be a bold swimmer
to jump off into the midst of the sea
rise again, nod to me, shout !

and laughingly dash with your hair.
- walt whitman