A Pattern Person

BookofPoems

When I was young and sent to my room for some indignity I’d cry as loud and as long as I could

My mother would tell me, with spite on her tongue, “sometimes I think you like to be sad.”

I didn’t cry to be sad I cried to be heard

But sadness kept me company, and held the comfort of a truth

that no one would be coming

but they should they should


#bookofpoems

Grief of time passing by of plans unmade life undone settling on my bones the well-worn weight of it reveals the shape of me a soft embrace whispering it’s ok to be


#bookofpoems #feelings

For seven days I heard a voice in my head speak a truth I didn’t know I had been seeking

louder

and

louder

until it had cleared away all the thoughts from my brain

until I could hear it echoing deafening off the bedroom walls

until I could only answer in reply

yes

yes!

YES!

until it covered me with joy and my heart turned inside out

and all the parts of me found their way home


#bookofpoems #fragments #becoming

It’s already my birthday in the place where I was born Hah! An extra two hours for me


#bookofpoems

Did you know there are people who have feelings?

Did you know there are people who have feelings that just show up like they have a standing invitation to the feelings party?

Did you know there are people who have feelings that they would like to share with other people who have feelings?

Did you know there are people who have feelings that speak and not the things that burrow into your body and gnaw at the walls of your stomach until you wonder if you have cancer

or the things that slide along your bones and bind your flesh so tight you wonder if you are made of stone

Did you know there are people who have feelings that move and dance and cry and sing and not the things that fold in and collapse into a black hole inside you, threatening to swallow the world if you open your mouth too wide

Did you know?

I didn’t know I didn’t know No one ever told me


#bookofpoems #becoming

Someday you will die and no one will know that you stayed up too late because you were avoiding the trash

Someday you will die and no one will think about whether you had a house or how you kept it


#bookofpoems

My body is leaking information words overflowing from my brain slipping out silently between the sounds of our conversations

flowing neatly, swiftly, through the tip of my finger as I scroll on the phone falling begrudgingly into my morning coffee, plop, plop, plop to be swallowed back down again

they are littering the floor piling up on the stairs they are churning churning in my head and twisting up in my hair

I want to gather them up

I want to pour them into the cracks of the world letting them grow thicker and thicker until they pry apart reality and reveal what is underneath

I want to pour them onto the page and watch them arrange themselves into a truth

I want to gather them up into the shape of me so I can show you and say, “see? see? now do you see?”

but they slip through my fingers as I walk down the hall they slide down the drain while I cut my hair over the bathroom sink they get lost in the piles of dirty laundry that do not care about me

and so I leave them, silently


#bookofpoems

In the mornings in that moment of waking before the world becomes real I would be filled with a feeling like a delicious secret settled in my bones and I'd think, it must have lost its way from a dream and I'd wait for it to flee as consciousness revealed its mistake

But I would wake and it would wake with me and it was real and I was real


#bookofpoems #becoming #fragments

For seven days I heard a voice in my head say, “you don't have to be a woman” louder and louder until it had cleared away all the thoughts from my brain until I hear it echoing deafening off the bedroom walls until I could only answer in reply yes yes! YES! until it covered me with joy and my heart turned inside out and all the parts of me found their way home


#bookofpoems #becoming #fragments

Rejoicing in rain blue skies heaven sent hopeful souls dance for a moment, reborn

But what souls still cry for shelter from the storm? what souls have left us to mourn?

Cloak yourself in faith, my dear steel your heart with joy we know not what the future brings but it will find us here


#bookofpoems #fires