She looks at me

With pleading eyes

Love me

A question

A command

A dare

To the mirrored

Challenge

I daily rise

It's been said that one man's - woman's! - trash is another person's treasure, so I thank all of you, my followers, for treasuring those works which I often think of as trash. Even when I've called my stuff "ca-ca" (*cough*) shortly after posting something, you guys - gals! - come out of the wordwork to applaud me and pass my words on, thereby warming the cockles of my heart. When I think I'm just a hopeless wreck who should never again dare to pick up a keyboard, pen, pencil, crayon, you go out of your way to assure me that I should, in fact, pick up a crayon - or even a keyboard, on my really good days! - again, and I am so thankful for that.

So thank you, one and all, my reliable quicker picker-uppers for lifting me when I need it most, for not pointing out my nakedness when I have bared myself to you, for not telling me to get a life. Because writing IS my life, and I am so grateful to you all for breathing along with me.

I'll also grudgingly add that I'm "thankful" for when you've called me on it when I've put my less than best foot forward on something. I wouldn't be getting better without you.

P.S. I know I haven't been as present as I have been in the past, but rest assured, I am around, and I do still care and love you all.

I half expected you to stick to the paradigm

Like you did every time you said goodbye.

You made an unsaid promise to return

Every time you said those words.

But the last time you said them,

You said them with such pain.

You said I would only gain

From you leaving.

You said you were just pulling me down with you.

And inside I secretly wanted you to say those words,

I shake whenever I remember those thoughts.

But the truth is,

You changed.

Everything around you was darker now,

As if you never knew happiness.

You said you'd hit rock bottom,

And that you just kept sinking.

I know that feeling.

I guess what we had wasn't a cycle.

It was no circle;

It had an end.

It was just a made up shape

With new corners added

Every time we tried to bring back

The dead.

If I look inside your soul

What will I see?

Will I feel what you feel?

The colors, like ghost butterflies

Glowing in the dark.

The emotions, like angels and demons

Warring with each other,

For your soul, your heart--

But for whom do they war?

Is it--could it be--

Me?

And so we found ourselves petrified of the morning to come

unable to sleep because that meant a new day

that we were not yet ready for.

So we pulled out pieces of hair

and played them like strings

on a violin

strung between

closed teeth

and two fingers

Counting seconds

and minutes

that were to valuable

to waste 

Cigarettes become like candy and liqueur like juice. The bruises on my heart are all from you. Every time I see your face, three years flash infront of me, no matter how hard I try they can't be erased. When someone who was your everything, every atom in your body, and you lose them, it's pain, an ache, a fire that burns inside of you that never goes out. They tell you to love with everything you've got, but what happens when you give it all and end up with nothing.  Once so full of life, now crippled by heartbreak, by the loss of you. Sunshine, becomes clouds colored black like the sky they sit in. Rivers flowing with clear crisp water, now look like oil spills traveling down the earth. The beauty in everything I saw, turned to ash and for a while it stayed lit with embers, but soon it died out completely. I'll spend forever trying to re ignite the beauty that was my everyday with you. 

I was a little black girl, blind and free

colour was just colour and humans were human.

The world looked so free, but I didn't notice the chains

The people so happy, but I didn't see the tears.

The world to me was mixed

The world to me was human.

Growing up, I was blind but my vision cracked colour was mixing and I was wondering,

The people spoke in tongues

The world was moving, her chains were loud my head hurt too much. My eyes were opening. The sun burnt.

While I was growing up the world appeared to me, the chains still invisible, my eyes half open. The colours ruining?

My whole life I was black. I knew blackness, naturalness, freedom, black was strong, running through my veins and my earth.

The soil looked like me, the beaches looked like me, the people looked like me. The sun embraced me, hued me darker, kissed me deeply.

As I grow up… I know I am black. I notice I am black. I am black… African American they call black.

No.

I am black, blood of blackness, skin in love with the burn of the sun. I see colour, they see poison. Tainting their starkness. Their possession. Thieves of a nation. Liars of history. Black makes sense. Black is me. Black doesn't ruin, it enhances. The richness of our roots.

I'm considered grown. The world is diverse, the chain rattle around her. Thick black bulky metallic restrains. Rusted from centuries of enslavement. She bleed black, cried white, hurt coloured and prayed mixed.

I am grown… they say. Coloured, and black. I can never save her, for she gave her life for us.

Once I was blind. Then I saw colour. I loved the mix, now I question my sight and pray for blindness. As a child I saw only black being black and colours beside it. Now, I see the ruined, the mixed, the coloured. The black.

I fear the light for it shuns sight on us. But I adore the darkness for it cloaks me with my colour.

I was blind. I see blurred. I cry for earth, cause she felt all. 

Breathe...

Just breathe 

Do you hear that? 

Silence... 

Keep your eyes closed. 

Don't think. Do. Not. Think. 

Feel the quiet, 

The vacancy in the air

The soft momentous vibrations in the air. 

Be one. 

Don't worry...

It won't harm you. 

Let it take you—allow it to sway you. 

Make it join with your soul. 

Don't run from the darkness. 

Because in a moment... It will be you.