THEY say I'm the PILOT of my plane, but I don't know how to fly;

and I've heard I can WRITE my own story, but which one's mine?

every INCH and hair of skin and head

are mine, I know but

if I never REPLY will you feed me LINES in your head?

will you know me at all?

I was BIGGER when I started;

every BRICK I add to the wall makes it smaller, somehow

if the RIVER would just take me away I would thank it,

it and its little pebbled waves and the leaves dropped,

GIVEN by the willows like SILENT tears

my FINE-tipped pen will trace every vein I can see through my skin

until the WHISPER in my head becomes a RHYME I can repeat;

traces of IRON won't make me strong with

such a hard shell around my heart

at the HEIGHT of my SAFETY

take me away from here

because I've had enough of this

and I don't know how to leave

the GRADE of sea to sky

is blurred

and if I drive my plane into the waves

I think I would keep on flying forever

MULTIPLY my aspects and

DIVIDE the walls I've built and

maybe

all the stories can be mine

the shower curtain rings make a trail on the floor

bread crumbs leading back to the puddle of water

leaking from the bathtub

will you pick up the pieces?

sticky with promise and heavy with

everything you've never done

you could see the future from here

if you would look

the tracks go on and on into the sunset surveillance

where you can't meet the eye without being blinded

so keeping your head down

you just

walk

past fingerprint ketchup stains by the baseboards

and that sweep of black sharpie you couldn't wash off

past the pattern on the wallpaper

the best way to avoid growing taller

is to never look back

to never remember how small you were

so you leave the shower curtain rings

and puddles and stains

and pieces of your past

and keep on trying not to look at the sun

She lands with a splash and a sizzle

Leaking blood like a bad ketchup visual effect

But it's real this time

And her smoking eyes draw you in,

Her frosty breath on your face

A cold shock

With a swat of her hand

Cities fall

But you have a checkered heart

And you keep moving closer

I looked up "pride" in the thesaurus, and found "self-esteem," "self-love," "self-worth."

Pride is also an emotion—the feeling of contentment the shines from somewhere deep inside myself when I know I've done something well. When I follow through, when I help, when I grow, when I say no to what doesn't serve or yes to what does.

I think sometimes I look for worth outside myself. I reflect back everything I find in other places, and wonder if that makes me enough. But it doesn't; it never did. True worth comes from within, and that golden feeling of pride is what happens when I know I'm enough.

I think I've seen myself as easy; easy to get along with. It wasn't always that way, but the walls I built put me in a safe place where I can forget I wasn't seen or heard.

I thought loving myself was easy for me, but maybe it wasn't. It was, and it wasn't.

Pride is the opposite of shame. We took our shame and swished and squashed it in our fingers and re-shaped it into pride. We've known the way shame and pride need each other, felt how the strongest pride creates the strongest shame, and the strongest shame creates the strongest pride.

We've wondered, am I enough? (Am I gay enough? Am I straight enough? Am I queer enough? Am I good enough?)

And where we can, we've found each other. We've wrapped our arms all together, a net of breathing limbs, and held on tight.

We're learning how to be seen and heard.

We're learning how to feel we are enough. (Not how to be enough, because we were enough all along; we're learning how to feel it.)

We're learning what makes us human.

And to anyone who feels threatened by it all: maybe you're jealous of our freedom. Maybe you haven't found your own humanity yet. Maybe you've never been seen or heard. Maybe you've never been hurt for who you are, and not because no one's ever hurt you (I know you've been hurt), but because you don't know who you are.

I know you're scared. We all are. But it's okay to take a look inside yourself and realize that you might not be just what you thought. You might not be normal. You might not be easy.

I've wondered, am I enough? (Am I good enough? Am I queer enough? Do I even belong here?) And maybe that's why I'm so proud that the answer is, "yes!"

and maybe it's because you feel your life is running away without you.

wallow in your shoes

(damp from your trek in the creek, your socks squish between your toes)

were you ever driving the car?

or was the steering wheel always dragging your hands along with it

like it's doing now?

you could eat cotton candy while you drive,

shoving fistfuls of melting sugar in your mouth

while the trees go by

getting greyer and smaller

until you realize it's because you're bigger now than you used to be;

does that mean you're colourful?

your chin is sticky with the remembered candy you didn't eat

and your eyes have strayed from the road

you thought you weren't the one steering

but you crashed into the crumbling side of the overpass

and blamed yourself

if you had turned right

what's the last thing you remember?

the way your knuckles looked, clenched around the wheel?

the way your teeth felt electric?

the way the wall loomed? you noticed every crack

perhaps for the first time

you make a left turn, by the overpass

hauling the battered car back onto the dirt road

socks squelching between your toes, foot on the gas

remembered cotton candy staining your teeth

and on you drive

wondering if the steering wheel would keep on turning if you let go

who are we to say what matters?

instead of forcing our subjective beliefs down each other's throats,

why not let the mothers, the only ones who know

the heavy weight of this choice

make the choice

do you think it's harder for you, a bystander,

than it is for the mother cutting a piece from her body?

if she has decided this is what's necessary

who am I to say no?

who are you?

Why is it controversial to say

"If you feel like a woman, you are one"?

I'm only a woman because I know I am,

Not because you told me

I'm a woman because

I've thought about womanhood

And felt femininity

And embodied the everything of the Universe

And maybe you're a woman (or not) for a different reason

He is smooth as an egg

But I dare not touch his skin or he might get cross

He is the son of a son of a son

And all his fathers spurned us

The sun peeks in through dusty blinds

So I take my cues and watch through eyelashes

Every glint of reflected light on him

And when the haze goes purple with dusk

Perhaps I will stand up and say something

"...she arose with flaming glory..."

But I might be too shy

And never let him know that he need not be his fathers;

I'd forgive him if he wasn't

I was raised Christian... sort of.

My mom is Christian, and we went to church every Sunday, but it wasn't what you think of when you think of "church". I mean, it did have a pastor back in those days (although it doesn't anymore), and we sang songs and went to Sunday school and all that. But a lot of churches seem to come from a place of "this is how it is" and this church seemed to come from a place of "let's explore our Christianity together".

My dad used to be Christian, but is now an atheist and has been for a while. We didn't know that growing up, though; he didn't talk about it.

So we were raised Christian. It's true, and I'm not sure why exactly I feel the need to add "sort of" to that, but I do. Because yes, my mom's Christian, but when non-Christian friends of hers find out, they tend to go "you don't seem like a Christian." And yes, we went to church, but it's the sort of church that welcomes everyone, and I mean everyone. Which is what all churches should be, isn't it? But most aren't like that at all.

Anyway. I'm not Christian. It came about gradually (as most things do, at least in my life); I got to that age where I started considering what I really believed, instead of just assuming everything I was told was the truth.

And I found out I love spirituality. I love learning about spirituality, connecting to the divine, thinking about my own beliefs, talking about spirituality; I love it all. It's become an important part of my identity, one of my favourite and defining traits: I'm a spiritual person.

And it's always a bit sad to me when people are religious, and lose all touch with spirituality. Religion should be a vessel, a framework to explore and connect with spirituality. But hey, what do I know? Everyone's different and maybe it's better for those people to approach it like that.

But my dad's always trying to tell me how alike we are, how he was just like me at my age, and I give him a raised eyebrow and say, "I don't know about that." One of the most important things to me is my spirituality, and he's all "Science! Facts! Evidence!" which tends to rub me the wrong way. But he tells me he was spiritual too at my age.

And that just makes me think, how sad. Your disillusionment with Christianity, the framework you used to define your spirituality, made you lose that spirituality altogether.

And maybe I'm completely wrong, but that's how it seems to me.

Nowadays I would say I'm a witch (don't tell my grandparents; they don't even allow the Harry Potter books inside their house, because they're possessed by the Devil or something?) And the problem with being a witch is that no one knows what I mean when I say that.

Witchcraft, occultism, the esoteric... they're incredibly broad categories and that's what's so great about them. In reading about witchcraft, I've felt a connection to it that I never felt learning about other religions or belief systems. Buddhism is super interesting and I love learning about it, but it doesn't click inside me in the same way. When I learned about witchcraft, though, it just felt like yes. This is me.

I suppose the first bit of witchiness I came across was tarot. I had always had sort of a vague idea that tarot was a thing that seemed cool, and then I read a novel that featured tarot cards, I read online about how tarot reading works, I learned that the final T is not actually pronounced, and I went and bought myself a tarot deck.

And wow. My vague idea was right; tarot is so cool. It's not some vague concept that supposedly helps you in your life but doesn't really actually do anything... it's practical. It's relevant. It's had immediate positive effects in my life.

And a big part of witchcraft for me is about taking back my own power. Turns out spirituality isn't just something I can think about—it's something I can actually do. It can be so much more than just cerebral; it can be embodied.

I've also learned so much about myself through learning about spirituality. I've always loved introspection, self awareness and personal growth are very important to me, and I love things like the enneagram and MBTI and gender and sexuality for how they help me explore myself. Adding in things like tarot, ideas of the divine feminine and masculine, astrology, or magick (spelled with a k to differentiate from fairy tale, make-believe, fantasy magic) adds more lenses with which to view my Self.

When I look up "spirituality" the definition is "the quality of being concerned with the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things." But that's not quite right. Spirituality is also concerned with the way the spirit or soul connects to material and physical things.

Everything is connected, interconnected, because everything is one. We're all manifestations of the Universe, of the Everything. Everything we do is an exchange of energy. Energy and divinity run through all of us, through everything, and we live in the illusion of separateness but nothing is ever separate.

Spirituality for me is connection, expansion. It's Everything.