your gentle grace
thawed my heart.
what greater image of hope
of rebellion
than in the ruins of a war torn world:
a single butterfly,
dancing, floating,
angelic amidst the ash.
Tag: healing
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a butterfly joined me on my walk
floating with grace
her painted canvas wings
a fluttering heartbeat.
they made me pause.
what are you doing, butterfly?
i saw its past, i saw its future,
breaching its cocoon,
then faltering, returning
to the earth’s womb.
i wondered:
what are you doing, butterfly?
why?
you emerge,
you return,
simply to grace our path?
why?
nature, so peculiar,
this thing you do.
the whole of life,
it seems to have no other reason
than to be briefly beautiful
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That family rug. ornate patterns. passed down for generations. progressively woven by each hand that possessed it. expensive threads. prized.
one speck of dirt tucked under. another. another. a mole hill. then a mountain. “it’s a molehill” they’d say. “that’s a mountain” i’d say back.
secrets passed along with the rug. secrets tucked under. eventually whole identities tucked under. me hid under.
to you — protection. me, under the rug, footsteps trampling all over — bearing the weight of the family’s shame.
a heel on my throat. can’t breathe. can’t speak.
i wanted to add my thread. they don’t use rainbow silks.
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And I look out to a sick, lonely world.
I am sick and lonely.
And I am enchanted by all of creation, its love and its beauty.
It’s love. It’s beauty.
And I am despondent
at the hatred and the venom,
the wrongness
and the blight.
I fear for the world
as the beast swallows the Sun —
cast are we
into the night.
But I’ve seen
a certain kind of Sunlight
fell from the heavens —
caught by none other
than the miraculous gleam
of my best friends’ eyes.
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Life itself. I stare, I stare. It shifts, illusory, feigning fixedness. It is a solid liquid, the coldest fire, burning ice, benevolent evil, malevolent goodness. The darkness is blindingly bright, the light is its own shadow.
I’ll never know who I am. I mimic the world out of sheer adoration. Water! Water! Water! Just when I am certain of my reflection, I touch. Ripples spread outward, the image changes, now that’s the real you, what were you thinking? I touch again, the cycle continues. I would be Narcissus if there was a self to admire.
I was staring at a pond. The ponds are pupils. The pupils of every passerby. Every friend. Every enemy. Every world leader. Every vagabond. I see me, but it is not me, my selfhood is not localized, like a drop of water in the ocean claiming the ocean as itself — the ocean claims the drop as itself.
Individualism is a prison, you form a self and are separate. You defend your cell bars with your life.
Collectivism is a prison, fall into line. All of our Selves are nailed to pseudo-sacrificial crosses, die unto yourself for some greater, false “good.” Die for us. Die for us. Die for us.
Where is the freedom?
Is the freedom the liminal space between every opposite?
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Desensitization, the enemy of presence, of gratitude. May I never forget what a gift it is to awake to a home filled not with loveless jabs, but with sweet song. That frayed nerve at the bottom of my spine will get the message eventually — that there is no threat to stay primed for. Time’s lazy waves will lap at this old rock. It will erode this old pain.
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A picture can paint
1000 words
but it can obscure
1000 more.
Snapshots of old,
you are an iceberg.
How you deceive me!
To be that beautiful again,
I don’t know if I ever will be,
if I were to look
only skin deep.
How a glow
can obscure darkness.
How weight loss
can mask a heaviness
in the soul.
Surrounded by people
but utterly alone.
Traded real warmth
to be “hot”–
but how cold
did I feel.
Why did I think
I’d cure the hunger
in my heart
by starving myself?
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To be truly seen: that which we both long for and fear the most.
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The funny thing about the terrifying ordeal of letting yourself be truly known is that there is no real love without it; and yet, we grow so convinced that the love which we so desperately crave would only elude us even more if we were to simply be seen.
It goes something like “All I want is to be loved; but if you were to really know me, you wouldn’t love me.”
All the unlovable and broken bits. The parts of me that desperately need love the most are the parts I cannot show you for fear of you leaving.
Yeah. Something like that.
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yeah, yeah, yeah,
silent on the home front,
the familial mute.
My journal had ears,
you all just had mouths.
Ask me what’s wrong
then talk over me–
I tell you what’s wrong
you tell me
why I’m wrong.
The quiet one;
I learned speaking
and not speaking,
they were the same,
I’d be just as heard
either way.
Or maybe
you all had such thick armor
I had to throw a dagger to be known.
but I never wanted to join the war,
never wanted to join the war.
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I can’t stop
won’t stop
writing poetry.
Not when I lived my entire life
with someone else’s hand clasped over my mouth.
I’ve got to use my voice,
if just to know I still have it.
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truth is a lit cigarette flicked onto a dry mountainside
set the world ablaze.
THE CLOSET MYSTIC 