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

Lost and Found

I used to wear a thin silver ring printed with the words "may your wildest dreams come true". It was sort of a good luck charm, and sort of a reminder to hold onto the hope that I would eventually get to where I wanted to be. I wore it every day, absentmindedly using my thumb to twirl it around my finger.

A few weeks after I moved into this house, still raw and reeling post-breakup, I inadvertently dropped the ring down the bathroom drain. There I was, in a state of emotional, financial and physical devastation, and I had just dropped my lucky charm into the depths of a decrepit plumbing system - what a perfectly poignant illustration of my anguish. It seemed such a fitting mishap that I never tried to retrieve the ring. 

Fifteen months later, my circumstances have changed very little. I am still living here, working an underpaid job, far from a new love and the life I want. But I am profoundly different. I have taken back control and rebuilt myself, cell by cell. I have rediscovered my confidence, my balance, my idealism. And I have learned how to dream again.

There is a place on the horizon where this life intersects with the threshold of my dreams. It will take some time until I can cross over, but I realize now that I can cover the distance and arrive - surefooted, curious, ready to create and explore and savor a little piece of the beyond.  

I had thought about replacing my old ring now that I am dreaming and living and thriving again... But instead I have my eye on another ring by the same artist, possibly a year-end gift to myself. It says "learning to fly".