New Blog Website!

Do you like surprises? After much anticipation (and impatience), I'm announcing my new blog website, Live Your Verb. Much more content and features will be added in the coming days, but there is plenty to check out now - so go take a look!

My previous writing will remain here for posterity but all new content will be published on the new website, so be sure to subscribe (previous subscribers have been moved over), add it to your RSS feed or follow my Twitter for updates.

Thank you to everyone who has been reading my blog - I am sincerely touched. I look forward to sharing much more of my writing with you, as well as other fun features I will now have space to post!

Click here to check out Live Your Verb

Escape

Nothing can invade this nest, this sweet place where we are set apart from the rest of the world. There is only the sound of our breathing; no ticking clocks, no chorus of voices demanding an explanation, a definition. Just a tangle of limbs and white blankets, heavy with the surrender of sleep.

In my dreams we walk in faraway places, lush islands and cobblestone streets and snowy forests. We talk and laugh and lift our eyes toward the heavens, awed by the beauty of sapphire blue skies, ancient architecture, pine needles blanketed in snow. And this delicious freedom. And each other.

During the night I wake to the tap-tap of rain on the windows, still tangled up with you, and then I am cradled into sleep again, back to my dreams – back to you.

Love Poem for No One

Like the delicate bud of a flower,
I come to you in a slow unfolding
of carefully coiffed layers

white petals of skin
                                separate,
                 fall away,
slowly
                 cascade
                                to the ground,
                                collect at my
                                                         feet.

I stand here, bare
in my verses and freckles and
pictures of my penance,
for forgetting - before -

to live in
               the poetry
               the unknown,
               
for forgetting to take flight.

Now, with wings, with reminders,
I am ready to
                      love (maybe)

lightly
longingly

like a bird
nesting, flying, returning

free
        where I choose to be.

Autobiography of a W(e)ary Heart

I am a soft, frail structure

bowing with

the slightest breath

or scent of rain

I hold you

at arm's length,

an undecided protest,

a push and pull

 

to avoid soaking up

your steadfast, wanton ways

Like crepe paper

beneath toppled ink,

you will blot out

the texture

of this thin skin

 

 

 

- for The Knight

Lines

I spent most of this year with pen to paper. I emptied my soul into notebook after notebook and there, deep in the marrow of my words, I found my voice. I learned to listen, to speak up, to sing, to declare - and to stop asking.

As I began creating my new website and blog (coming soon!), I reread everything I wrote. Some of it is so bleak and lost that it seems as though it was written by a stranger - but then, I suppose, in a way it was...

I made the journey. I am a new me, with a new future, and new lines to write - and I'm leaving these ones far behind.

January

Oh hell.

There is a distinct difference between merely surviving and really living.

 

February

I began finding my self again the same way I sent her off, in bits and pieces, stashed away in cardboard boxes. A half-written poem, an old beloved sweater, a forgotten photo I had cherished and taken off the wall. And suddenly, there she was, all sass and stubbornness and confidence, a chatty, dancing, jeans-and-t-shirt wearing me.

I remember the hope that steadied us for so long, and I try to rediscover a little piece of it every day. Somehow I know therein lies my salvation.

 

March

I can build anything I want there - a sandcastle, a temple, a cocoon, a bed.

But the life - that colorful, heartfelt, dauntless kind of living - lies in the chances, the messes, the mistakes. Looking back, I regret very few things I did, and countless more I didn't do.

April

"The tic wakes me up", she said.

May

My ribs rattle a tune,
an echo of unrest.

Words
         hang
                in the space
between us,

July

 

She had grown tired of the routine.

And there, among her pale thin ribs, were tiny bits of things breaking through the surface of the dirt: little scraps of colored cloth and silky feathers and streaks of paint, the faintest etchings of poems, the teeniest wildflowers.

How could she possibly have thought she was alone in the house with all these wild things tangled about her ribs?

August

"See?" he said. "We already are part of each other. We made our marks long ago." He gestured to the patterns. "You have always been part of me."

September

 

If there is a loose string, I am compelled to pull it.

And somewhere in the silence, he lost me.

 

October

I wade through the debris and silence and loss, and, eventually, inevitably, find myself back in a sea of living, breathing love. I always make my way back. 

So this is the lesson: I was broken down so I could rebuild myself, discard the fragments of old lives and loves and bind myself together lighter and braver than before. I lost my way so I could discover I was on the wrong path. My heart was broken again and again so I could learn to mend it on my own. 

November

I am soaring, ever higher and farther, until the debris is out of sight. For once, the others can sweep and tidy and hold the walls together...

All this time I was searching for roots when what I really needed was wings...

a strange sweet

duet of winged spirits and

fine feathers all aflutter

Bird Song

There is a small wind-up bird

that perches inside my chest

She totters between my ribs,

back and forth and back again

And when she's wound she trills a

soft sing-song in my ear, and

I move to the rhythm of

her serenade, a strange sweet

 

duet of winged spirits and

fine feathers all aflutter