I touched the clouds with my cotton candy lips

whipping the sky with my laughter.

I dreamt in color.

And that bold, beautiful world

would shimmer just so.

Just as quietly and assuredly as any world would want to,

if it had a choice I mean.

And I knew even as a child,

that we all had choices:

Some big, some small,

some seemingly mundane,

but they all made up that world

that I thought was pure beauty.

Then I woke from my cotton candy dreams,

older with eyes that looked to steady ground and not just the

l i m i t l e s s sky

and the world that seemed to shimmer before my eyes

dimmed and my lips became cracked from the strain of trying to smile

when there was no reason to after all.

That young girl who saw the world in color and shimmers,

who touched the sky with her small hands,

Lost it.

And haven’t we all been there?

Where we see the world,

see our possibilities,

and tie it to another?

Then look and believe that together, our bound forevers will make the world sing once more.

And haven’t we all become untethered from that beautiful longing?

And the person whose hand found yours has disappeared behind black skies, where the clouds mute to dim whispers and you are there still, loudly muttering your loss to no one in particular.

And the young ones out there whipping the sky with their laughter don’t know what will come when they greet the world with more than a smile. I wish to God I could shield them from that.

Especially young girls with cotton candy lips, swirling laughter and small hands- always reaching for more, in a world that used to shimmer just so.

I don't know how to tell you the moon is full

when you've only ever see the half of what is.

You are the phases of moon that will never reach completion.

There is no togetherness in the reality of your shadow.

When the moon is full and the sky bright with possibility,

where will you be?

In shadows, under a blood red moon.

Loudly muttering to yourself

all the crimes you've perceived against you.

I suppose of all the moons this one suits you best.

You, hungering for justice that never seems to satisfy the blood lust you bathe in.

I don't know how to tell you to want to fight for all of us

when you've never seen us in the first place.

There is only you. There is only hardness. There is only death.

But that is the justice you crave.

I suppose there is no light in this shadow you've cast now is there?

My Aunt Cecilia loved to read. She loved old movies and she loved above all else, her family.

My Aunt Cecilia had an iron gate for a mind. Impenetrable, full of thoughts that she sometimes shared through sharp wit and a laugh that grabbed at your attention no matter where you were in the room.

That was my Aunt Cecilia.

Then one day, my favorite Aunt of mine found the trap door in her iron gated mind and fell through it.

You see, when you are diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's at the age of 58, you cannot help the impending fall. I remember when she told us like it was yesterday, not 10 years ago.

I remember because afterward her daughter and my mom (her sister) began to talk about what to do next. Aunt Cecilia had begun showing signs of some sort of decline for the last 2 years. She could not be a teacher anymore, she forgot what the lessons were the moment she wrote them, she could not follow you in your car because she forgot the directions upon reading them, or that she was following you in the first place. She could not ring your lunch up in the school cafeteria because she forgot how to work the cash register...

I remember so much, so vividly during this time. But mostly I remember my Aunt Cecilia's face. Her face seemed to crumple like tissue paper, and her body hunched inward, as if to warm herself from an onslaught of a cold front.

The cold reality that she would not remember much longer.

And now... 10 years later, my Aunt Cecilia has forgotten she was ever sad in the first place. She rocks back and forth in a nursing home while I feed her, her lunch. She hums to no music and sucks on her teeth in a smacking rhythm in her wheelchair. She mumbles words and looks up brightly when she sees my mom, but when she sees me...

She sees right through me. I talk to her about my day. I read her stories and ask questions that I know I will never get an answer from.

I... I... I try to remember for her.

I try, because what are we but the experiences and memories of our past? I think it might be the only way to even envision a future, by knowing your past.

I have never formally said goodbye to my Aunt Cecilia, but little by little with each visit, I see that I have been saying goodbye, over and over. I will never not be grateful for my visits and time with her, even now as a shell of her former self.

But even still, with the memory of her old self winking at me in my dreams, I say goodbye and hope that if there is a next life, she will be wholly herself,

her whole life long.

She walks on thorns

bloody and wanting

she walks on them to feel something,

anything.

When did the night become the day all the way through?

How do you protect a heart already too open to the world?

She picks flowers from her feet

where the thorns laid bare her skin.

even in the most dismal of pains,

there,

beauty lies.

blue, pink, red

When exposed to air

She never saw her end-self come

Until they stared

Memory is a bone

Ivory and unseen

She is in her forgotten words

Pink turns blue

No air

I am here

She cries

Memory is a bone

Ivory and unseen

He said I tasted of peaches.

That is what he will remember the most.

He told me, "I will take you anyway I can get you."

I think he thought it was romantic.

And maybe it is,

maybe I am so broken I cannot recognize love,

even if it is a desperate kind.

I told him,

"I think I can only give you a shadow of what you deserve.

There is nothing whole in this hollow cavity.

Can you love a ghost?"

"Yes, I will take you anyway I can get you." He repeats.

And all the while

I'm reminded of when we first met,

that I smell of peaches.

The small of my back tingles

from a brush of his fingers,

now a ghost on my spine.

And I am left wondering just how much of a ghost I am.

Have I done this to myself or am I more dream than shadow ?

He left me in a puddle there-

he said, "This is the one safe place for you.

Come, you will not be forsaken."

But lies can live anywhere one plants them.

He planted many

and they flowered into beautiful promises

that will never be.

So that asylum he spoke of,

that safe place for me to land and live.

was a garden of gorgeous colors that wilt

under the slightest built of scrutiny.

I wish to go back to then.

Let me find asylum,

in something more than just empty eyes and hollow words.

Anyone, someone, please- take me home.

... Only to whisper

"Don't worry darling"- I'll build

Springtime in Winter

: - )

And how do you wish to be seen?

In gray wrapped in understanding.

And does that translate to loving?

Only if the person can hold their hands open and try to catch all the hurts of the world even when they burn.

Are you looking for brokenness?

No one is exempt from brokenness, that’s the beauty of humanity.

I do plan to love one- broken and all.

And what do you want of Love?

To be someone’s beloved.

To be called by name.

To be known.

That would be enough.

...has already arrived.

That is what it means to heal.

Rub sugar in my wounds.

It burns me raw, but at least I smell of sweetness this time.

Not rare meat- where a blood hound used to sniff all my despair to the surface.

And what is a surface without an "underneath"?

And I have so much underneath.

I don't need to be extraordinary to be important.

I can just be an ordinary woman.

Deep, blue eyes, a smile with crinkled eyes-

like tissue paper, a prelude to the present underneath.

A mind, wanting ordinary things.

Yes, I don't have to be amazing to be a part of this world.

I can just be be a woman,

with small gifts,

and a brave smile.

I can just be.