In my dreams, I used to dance with Love.

His face was always a blank canvas for a future lover to embody one hopeful day.

I think heartbreak is seeing his face become that of Love.

Then one day, realizing he was not Love at all.

He was a man, with faults like all humans, and these faults outweighed any love I could give to build a bridge to his heart.

I am now on the sidelines in my own dream, watching Love dance with every person but me.

And isn't that what heartbreak is?

Looking into your future and realizing you put all your hopes in the wrong person.

A person who only saw your value through the sadness you carried between your thighs.

I accepted the love I thought I deserved: which is nothing, nothing good enough to build a home with.

I think my heart has broken thousands of times. But he was the first person to trash it.

I have been picking up the pieces ever since.

I am picking up parts of myself I forgot even existed.

Heart break creates a mosaic of sadness so beautiful you can't help but cry at all the pieces you once possessed.

But my patchwork heart still beats. Still rattles out hope that one day I will find all the pieces I once had and then some-

And I will hold my heart with care,

after it has been neglected for so long:

Broken and still beautiful.

Eyes know nothing of ardor, feeling, passion, pain, even lust. They only see. Their only job is to accept what is there when you open those big blues.

It is the dove of a woman who wisps out feverish hands to hold onto truths that do not exist. Why God, won’t you come down to tell her Yourself what is real?

She looks, opens her blue birds and wants to be more than what she is right now.

When she reaches into the moon of her eyes to pull out the sockets of residual hate passed down from weeping women-- also wisps with fevered hands- reaching for something more, that they don’t know exists.

How do you go on living when all that is left are reasons to close your big blues forever? Wrap your cloak over those reasons to keep going; hang your eyes on the coat rack.

Accept the unacceptable fact that you cannot heal the whole world with a broken heart,

or even a whole one for that matter.

I’m going to write about something other than you,

than pining after someone who can’t even muster up enough effort to get to know me, to want me so much that you would stop playing these games and make it real.

I’m writing about something else.

How when I walk down a sidewalk I notice all the cracks

and instead of stepping over them like I used to,

I step right on them.

Instead of writing about you, I’ll remember that I have plans,

and none of them involve waiting on you to make up your mind.

Instead of writing about you I’m going to remember that life doesn’t wait for no one and I refuse to fall into your web of what ifs, maybes and half truths.

I don’t know how the playing pieces on your board all look like broken hearts

and I sure as hell am not picking that shit up.

But I digress, this isn’t going to be about you.

I’m going to write about something other than your possibility that isn’t going to happen.

I’m going to write about how I step on the cracks in the sidewalk because I want to tempt fate. To remind myself that I am the master of my life and nobody can maneuver my life the way I can.

I want to make the world come to me in my dreams like it used to when I would dream on fire. When I wasn’t worried about your lips or what was on your mind, or why you didn’t text me back. Again.

But this isn’t about you, it’s about that woman who makes portraits in her mind filled with words to describe what she sees- when there aren’t enough words in the world to make what she feels come to life as beautiful as what she feels in that moment.

I will write about how when I dream on fire, I feel the burning in my own body and I make myself wait on me. On my own timing, to let that taught wire of need burst, because I make it so.

I don’t wait on lame promises.

I make my own promises.

I feed my own flame.

And goddamn it’s fucking bright.

It’s hot to touch

and nobody can do me like me.

Because I am a goddamn masterpiece and I respect myself enough to know when something is holy, when something deserves praise, and after so many lost years, blind to my own worth that used to only come from between what I thought were broken thighs, I now see that just because someone broke in doesn’t mean I’m broken.

It’s time to put the paint brush down and stare at the beauty of what is.

And I am.

I am here, and I burn for something far greater than what you won’t give.

But this isn’t about you.

This is about me. And it’s about goddamn time.

'Well, I know how I can be..."

And here I am waiting on truth to finally fall from that beautiful mouth of yours,

so I can actually know how you can be.

For something not cloaked in half truths under a moon so full, you cannot hide in the shadows of something so beautiful it hurts your heart.

And you hurt my heart.

Maybe you know this.

I have a feeling you know what kind of string pull my limbs towards you, how to pull my eyes to look for that smirk of yours.

And I know what it means to dance for others, hell I know how to dance for myself, but lately you are all my eyes look for, what my heart wants to hold.

Now don't get it twisted, I don't aim to possess. My body isn't a home for another, it is a landing pad for someone just as strong as me to look to for comfort on days when you are so vulnerable from a moon so beautiful it illuminates all of your ugly parts.

And I think you have ugly parts, because you bring out my ugly parts.

There are days I hate you. I roll my eyes and look for something better than you. I laugh at your fickle nature, hoping that you come back to me...

And you do just that: you come back when I am almost done with your name on my lips and your mouth on my mind.

I haven't even kissed you yet, but somehow I know you'd taste like freedom.

Maybe you don't want to be free.

Maybe you already are so free,

so why look for more from a woman who can't stop thinking of you?

You don't need those type of "chains".

At least that's what you think of

when you think of commitment.

We disagree on this.

And isn't that what heartbreak is?

So can you help me let you go? Can you not flirt with my fantasies,

or better yet my heart?

Respect me enough to give up on me. So I can give up on you. Completely.

I want to breath and taste freedom from someone else, at least give me that much.

I saw your picture today,

you didn’t even try to make it a good picture

yet you made it flawlessly sexy anyway.

The other women oohed and awed

and I went along, preening and making jokes on your “effortless” beauty.

But the whole time I had a pit in my stomach and I wanted to say, “Fuck you.”

Fuck you for making me doubt my eyes.

Fuck you for coming in and out of my life

Fuck you for when you do come in, always getting my hopes up

and then there you go falling off the face of the Earth again. Fuck.

Fuck you because I was beginning to forget you.

Fuck you because I am dating someone

and I still look up tarot readings wondering why you’re on my mind.

Fuck you because I don’t want to want you.

Fuck you because it makes me think that I only crave love from people who don’t want

me.

Fuck you because I am MORE than that.

Fuck you because I am MORE than what you are giving me.

Fuck you because I don’t need you.

Fuck you because you are the one missing out on a fucking badass woman: me.

I am angry.

I am so angry at you.

At myself.

At my mind,

for fixating on you, when I know you will not come through.

To all those fucking movies, Rom-Coms, telling me the one I hate will one day make

me happy.

Fucking stupid.

And the whole time when I turn to tarot reading on youtube all asking the same

question: should I give up on you?

And I am silently screaming: “Let me give up on you because FUCK YOU!”

I am told in 3 consecutive videos all different yet the same topic, that there is something to wait for. That you will reach out.

Fuck you, I call bullshit.

And upon hearing the description of your hot and cold advances, your indecision, and non committal bullshit, I want to scream, “Well FUCK YOU!”

Because you piss me off and yet I still think of you.

So, fuck you.

Fuck you for all of this, for the promise you represent, the power you hold, and the

insecurity you stir in me.

Fuck. You.

Little one, when did you start believing you were not enough?

I, I don’t know…

Little one, don’t you recognize me?

You are Love.

Yes, darling. Don’t you know how I love you? How long I have loved you?

She looked up at Love for the first time. Fear in her ocean eyes. She dared ask,

How?

When you were but a blink in the universe, that’s how long. As for how, through every wrong stuck in your backbone, to make you walk on eggshells. I break bread with Shame to make sure he doesn’t knock on your door anymore. I have Self-Loathing as a friend to appease him from diving in your mind. I spill oceans into the eyes of your father to make him see clearer. I sing lullabies to your mother to calm her to gentle sleep.

I do this for you. That is how I love you.

In my dreams, I went to the willow that is just at the river’s edge, the edge of my memories. And the branches drooped low to kiss the water into ripples of new.  The rings grow and I begin to think of the widening circles around my life. The ones where I felt at times, were so small I would suffocate.

Faces come to mind from a time in my life, I’d rather forget. The funny thing is the mind knows what I can take, at least in these moments where I am in control. So these blurred faces with so much to say, cannot give me their expression of disgust and hatred, which would make the words so much more potent.

In my weaker moments, when I feel my water soaked memories pour into my consciousness, I am surrounded by a wall of words- All meant to put to death any love I ever carried for myself.

And in these weaker moments I let the wall fall on me. And I am in the wreckage and no one even thinks to come and find me.

These days, these are the ones that are hard to get through.

#1 Untitled

I’m not really sure what should be next.

I’ve never had one place to call mine.

I’ve built houses in others’ bodies.

Sought shelter in different lands,

And yet,

I feel like an unplugged vacuum.

Taking up space in your closet.

Waiting for that one moment

to be useful.

#2 A Fucked Up Sort of Calm

Sometimes when you know you’re better,

you still think about your eventual death,

and there comes this strange calmness...

What the fuck is that about?

# 3 Temple of Your Body

What temple have you visited lately?

My body.

What did you destroy?

All I could find.

#4 Nothing and Everything

When you believe you are nothing,

Nothing,

becomes your Everything.

#5 Second Chances

When all you long for is death,

Life, bitter and neglected,

bulldozes its way

back into your life

begging for a second chance.

That summer you told me that you loved me. You said this would your eyes shut, afraid to see my response. Afraid that our friendship would be over and that would be it.

Then you opened your eyes and looked into my eyes. And you saw love there. And our friendship didn’t end. It shifted. Two 18 year old children pretending to be adults. I became pregnant a month later. We had plans for college, to get out of the little South Dakota town in the middle of nowhere. To go see the ocean even though I’m terrified of water. I still wanted to sit in awe of something so big, so full of life, so unknown to us humans even now.

But my stomach began to balloon, and my little 18 year old self knew what was to come. We decided that you would go to college finish your time there, get a good job and come back for me while I stayed with my family taking care of our baby.

You went off to your dream, and I put mine on hold. You called every night your first 3 months. You’d come home every other weekend, starved to see my face to se our baby. But then, it changed. You began to call less and less. You didn’t look so starved to see me and the baby. I’d cry to my mama

every night and then one day I stopped hearing from you altogether. Your family wouldn’t say what you were doing why you stopped calling. I didn’t even know when or if you ever came home.

The baby’s due date came and I prepared to be a mama myself. Alone. The doctor came in and gave me the news that was more devastating than you leaving me. She could not hear the baby’s heartbeat. I hadn’t even named my baby yet. I pushed all the lifeless life out of me.

She was a little blue ball of mine. Perfectly in a ball waiting for me

to hold onto what would’ve been a whole life together. I can’t explain what happened after. The sky opened while I held my little girl. I named her Alina. A musical name for a beautiful possibility if what “could’ve been”. The sky poured, while I rained down my heartache. Life isn’t kind at times I think.

18 year old me decided it was time for college. I packed my old room and my worried parents watched my little pickup become swallowed by the horizon. You called me some years later asking to meet me and ask about our child. I didn’t answer at first bEva use you do not deserve to know anything.

But I was graduated living as a young professional working real estate on the banks of North Carolina. We met on the beach, and I told you that you weren’t allowed to speak until I was finished. You were thinner Than I remember, tired looking and sad. I felt no sympathy. You closed your eyes afraid of what you would see.

This time I told you to open them during what I had to say. You did and you cried the whole time I spoke of what was and what could’ve been.

You began to apologize over and over again. You tried to explain yourself. But I wouldn’t let you. I don’t regret that. I don’t want to know. All I heard from you was that you were young and stupid, and made huge mistake.

i left you weeping on the beach next to an ocean I had always feared yet was in awe of.

I’m 40 now, and I think most of my life I’ve lived in fear of what I don’t know. You never reached back out. But I sent you a letter last year because I felt you should to know our baby’s name.

And I summed up our time together in 2 sentences:

"I've been tryna swim with both my hands behind my back. My dear, I always feared the ocean.”

I still fear the ocean. I wonder about my Alina and the life she could’ve had. but now I dive into the current of life regardless of fear, knowing the whole time that having fear doesn’t make me a coward, living and never trying does.