Kindest Regards
May you find poetry in the creases of your palms, introduce it to light.
Thank you for another wonderful June full of kindness and art! 🙂
May you find poetry in the creases of your palms, introduce it to light.
Thank you for another wonderful June full of kindness and art! 🙂
Thank you for saying
something ugly and ignorant and homophobic
today.
I was starting to trust you too much.
I needed a reminder
that you still have claws.
It was Blue Mountain Lake
and summers shared with sibs
and cousins. It was Skaneateles
Lake and walking down
to Borodino landing with Jody,
swimming in the village park
with Catherine. It was the long
drive from Cincinnati to Chase Lake
in the Adirondacks where
I arrived, exhausted, instantly
revived by the smell of recent
rain dripping off pines.
It was the day long drive
to the shore of Lake Michigan,
the body of water that curved
at the horizon, that catapulted
me back to childhood, and the lake
my Grandma called Ontario Ocean.
4 and a half years
4 and a half years wasted on something that’s seems so perfect at first glance
I find myself in a dark hole
I grasp at anything I can hold onto
A hand finds mine and pulls me into the light
The light I held onto for years flickers and burns in my hands
It’s so perfect
Everything is perfect
This is what everyone dreams of
2 years pass and more and more hands pull to keep me in the light
The hand that originally served as my anchor to the light starts to sink
Down
Down
Down
Down
Down
It hits the bottom of my conscientiousness
The chain that was wrapped around my arm yanks me
I fall into the abyss leaving everything I knew behind
The anchor holds onto me
Pretending to keep me safe
We slowly rise up
Forgetting what caused us to fall in the first place
The chain around my arm tugs and tugs at my skin
What can I do to escape from its grasp?
The bolt cutters seem so enticing
But will I really leave the anchor down at the bottom?
Knowing it could never makes its way back up
What kind of man would that make me?
I know the whole world is watching now.
And I wish the world could see what I can see.
-Felix Baumgartner
People used to think it was impossible
to run a mile in under four minutes
or a 100-meter dash below ten seconds.
The sound barrier is called so
because engineers feared
any aircraft trying to push through it
would get ripped to pieces.
For millenia the world looked up at the moon
without ever dreaming we’d one day walk on it.
Somebody dives toward the earth
from 135,000 feet up in the sky
and somebody else begins planning
to jump from 140,000.
Everest was considered inconquerable.
Oceans were believed uncrossable.
The Mariana Trench was thought unreachable.
We’ve succeeded at them all.
It’s almost like human beings
have no real limitations.
So what makes you think
there’s not one person on this planet
who can handle you at your worst?
Every day, people prove
how much the physical body can do.
Why should the heart be any different?
In the stolen hours of night
a beautiful conversation gives rise
to a new, indelible wisdom.
Find ways to become limitless.
Find people to be limitless with.
Give the gift of your whole self
and live ready to receive the same.
One does not need to be a believer
to appreciate the calling
of helping to bear another’s cross.
Someone is meant to walk beside you
if you can find faith in their existence.
That’s the kind of person I aim to become.
But this journey toward home
is far from complete.
Along the way, I have fallen
and fallen and fallen again
and I will someday fall more.
Still, every time falling
is like an arrival in itself.
I take a moment
to lie in my shattered mess
remembering life,
then I set about collecting
shards of broken bone
to build myself new armor.
Eventually, I’ll be rid of my fears
and when that day comes,
the true journey will begin.
Becoming limitless with another human being.
And I hope that you
will have the courage
to be limitless with me.
Maybe then
the fearful
and the faithless
will finally find a way
to collide
in realms
of eternal creation.
Eyes red ribbon
It’s green velvet
chairs and double pane
windows and half painted
toe nails and a cat nap.
It’s condensation
on the knee and wilted
paper cups and stacked
books on the coffee table.
It’s twin tails around
the ankles and heels
tapping in the shower and
hair twisted up off the neck.
It’s a post
in the ear and a needle
in the shoulder and a bone
deep urge to do it over.
June, June
of course it’s you.
Every semester,
enter a room
full of people
who did not choose
to meet you.
Public Speaking.
Equally required and dreaded.
It sits on the degree audit
like a gauntlet.
A box
between them
and anywhere else
they would rather be.
They arrive
already rehearsing
their objections.
I hate speaking.
I’m terrible at this.
I’ll never need it.
Which is fascinating,
because no one says,
I hope my ideas
remain trapped
inside me.
I was the teenager
who opened her mouth
and nothing came out.
I was the high school
dropout who fainted
from fear
just walking
down a school corridor.
The first speeches
are exactly
what fear
looks like
when given
a time limit.
Hands
looking for somewhere
to belong.
Voices
forgetting
their own weight.
Entire bodies
trying to disappear
while standing
at the front of a room.
Then something
almost imperceptible
begins to happen.
A sentence
lands.
A story
survives
being spoken aloud.
A laugh breaks
the tension.
And the room
begins
to teach itself.
One student
finds
their voice.
Another realizes
their own fear
looks remarkably
similar.
Confidence,
it turns out,
is surprisingly
sticky.
Sometimes
it spreads
by osmosis.
Watching
someone survive
the thing
you fear.
Sometimes
by compassion.
Seeing
a classmate
forget
their words.
Lose their place.
Recover.
Applauding
not because
the speech
was perfect.
Because
they kept going.
They discover
the audience
was hoping
they would succeed
all along.
At the same time,
another kind
of attention
is quietly forming.
Not simply how to speak.
How to listen.
How to notice
when conviction arrives
before evidence.
How language can illuminate.
And manipulate.
Every generation believes
propaganda
belongs
to another place.
Another century.
As though persuasion
only becomes dangerous
when spoken
with another person’s
accent.
Critical thinking
is less about having
the right answers
than recognizing
when someone
is trying to borrow
your certainty.
By the final speeches,
many of them
are still nervous.
But nervous
and incapable
are different species.
Confidence,
it turns out,
accumulates
like muscle.
One repetition.
Then another.
Until the thing
that once felt impossible
becomes
something your body knows
how to do.
The room does not eliminate fear.
It changes
where it lives.
Listen, child, my only blood,
I have for you a quest.
To be the next great queen who rules,
You’ll have to travel west.
To start with our sad history:
Our blood was royal once,
And so shall be for us again,
When you regain that front.
The king, as most do know him,
Married into my line.
My parents were the rulers,
So he shared what was mine.
Until but two years later,
He wished me put aside,
He found a “better” woman,
To mold into his bride.
And we were banished, darling,
Us princess babe and queen,
Dwelt deep in woodland outskirts,
To plan revenge unseen.
Through these long years I’ve trained you,
With mettle and with sword,
The time comes to move swiftly,
And earn the final word.
But my eyes now grow heavy,
I may not see this through,
Yet though I will not reach my dream,
It burns strong still in you.
So charge, dear princess, now full-grown,
Go fight by any means,
To see yourself o’erthrow the king,
And be crowned the rightful queen.
October’s first cold morning and I could actually feel the chill
Like the air touching my skin is saying, “hey I’m here”
The Sun’s had the upper hand for ten months straight
But lost its battle by the eleventh
Maples went all-in on red this year
Like they’re not scared to burn out fast
Now they’re dropping leaves everywhere-
Not sad, just tired of holding on
I love how they fall slow
Like they’re trying to find out if they’re capable of flying
On the way down
They hit the sidewalks
And just stay there, no fuss
I walk home, kicking through them
It makes me think that maybe it’s ok to lose stuff sometimes.
Trees do it every year and there fine
Bare, but fine
I thought that summer died
But it didn’t
It just left, and autumn didn’t cry about it
Learning that letting go doesn’t have to be loud
Been trying to grasp that
