Galaxies and shattered planets
2021
All those little pieces of yourself,
scattered on the floor
from the last time you fell.
The pile is so much smaller than you think it should be.
Are you really made of so little substance?
No, my darling.
You are made of galaxies
and all the space between the stars.
Only the parts of you with names can be broken by life,
the bits that make up the smallest part
of who you really are.
You are an entire cosmos.
Those are mere planets
lying there in pieces.
Feel into the whole of yourself,
your entire being.
You cannot ever fully shatter.
So much of you is made of magic.
So much of you is too ethereal
to even fall.
I always thought there was something wrong with me.
That I was constantly breaking
and remaking myself.
Now I see that that is a normal part of life--
the waves of it crashing against my lonely shores.
If I didn’t have these shifts
I could hardly call myself alive.
It’s all the same.
The breaking and returning of the waves.
The breaking and recreating of the woman.
— “the Waves of Being” 2021
Opening
2020
Your whole life, you’ve been swallowing them:
The jagged pieces of yourself.
They cut your throat going down, don’t they.
What if instead, the next time you feel Yourself rising
you opened your mouth wide
and gave a voice to what’s trying to break free?
Roots
2018
I can honestly say
no place feels like home to me.
I finally understand that now.
My roots won’t grow in rooms,
no matter how much light they get.
No matter how much of myself I put into them.
My roots can only grow
in the connections I feel
with the people I love.
How lucky I am
to know this simple truth
about my own soul.
If I hadn’t burned my old life to the ground
and scattered the ashes to the four winds,
if I hadn’t left behind me all that was safe and familiar
and let myself be tossed by the storm,
I would never have found you.
And that would have been a tragedy.
— “New Love” 2017
