Tag: she

Little Girl

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*A poem from the fall of 2019.*

The light in the distance reminds of something I just can’t place,
green, shining.

The moon’s so bright, I’m almost blinded by the beauty of it.

I let my inner child out,
she screams and begs and cries
with her new found freedom only to find
that she fought so hard to arrive in a world
of pain and grief. 

The tears marking her face create tracks,
tracks of her life slipping past,
year after year as she tries to bury herself away again. 

It’s too difficult. It’s all too much sometimes.
She can’t see the green grass or feel the crisp air.
She can barely address the ground beneath her feet
and the sky above her head. 

They keep her trapped on a planet
with an atmosphere so thick
she can barely breathe at times.

She

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I spoke to someone today.
You may have met her once,
twice even.
Young, tired, with shining eyes.

She showed me past injuries,
each scar a scene from a film
made up of haunting memories.

Each pain point drew me closer,
cues to the battles she fought.
Villages crumbled in her wake,
dragons were slain, yet
wars continued waging.

It’s hard to understand, she said.
I nodded, listening.
I felt her fear,
cradling the dark in my lap
as she did in her head.

Her thoughts,
intricate and beautiful,
painted the walls,
telling a story with no ending.

She fought monsters
disguised as love,
lost friends who turned blindly away.

I kissed the scars on her arms,
her forehead, her heart.
I held her hand as she began to glow.
Warmth filled her cave,
and lightness took hold.

I swore to fight for her,
and to come back,
again and again.

to observe and to feel

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Human nature is to try and to fail,
to make mis-takes and to learn,
to hurt and to love.

(We use screws instead of nails.)

She shouts, guarding herself with words like bullets,
rather than admitting fault.

(We use anger instead of compassion.)

He goes silent, building walls,
layers of brick to block the pain.

(We pray to be different from our parents.)

But trauma is cycled through generations.
I feel the weight of my great-grandmother
in the movement of my hands over my heart.
I hear the last cries of my grandfather
before his heart turned sour.

(To heal is to break the cycle handed down to us.)
(To heal is human.)

West. Branch. Pond.

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Maine, 2020

Cold air seeps into her skin,
chilling her blood, bones
creaking from the jostling car ride.

The forest stretches before her–
the trees transition from deciduous to coniferous
as the sky grows darker and the road longer.

A surge of past lives greet her on the way,
an emotionally intense experience
while travelling down the gravel road
that cradled the feet of hundreds of wayfarers before.

Each wayfarer, story
settling behind her eyelids like a motion picture–
but more tragic and more beautiful.

They all adventured to find truth,
as if capturing it would bring a new sense of warmth.
She searches too, but not as intently
for she understood a certain bias in her.

The search for truth,
as she saw it,
was difficult for we don’t always accept what is true.

Truth, ours
isn’t always the universe’s,
merely a fragment–
a glimmer of something honest.

Looking down at this dirt road,
a sister to the one that carried her here,
She feels a shift.

The dragonflies,
feeling the shift too,
soar beside her as she follows the path
of wilder things–
each one gliding,
accepting the truth of her.

She was a wildflower

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There was once a young girl
who saw the beauty of life.
She gave herself to it
completely, not understanding time
or her inability to reach the sun.

With hands outstretched
in a field of poppies,
she laid herself down to
feel the movement of the earth
in her bones.

She accepted
life, dragging her along
without reason or intent,
waiting for the right moment.

Fear wasn’t a concern
for it was just another day
with endless possibilities.

…

A phone vibrates on the counter,
drawing attention away from the tasks
at hand, like a bee trapped in a spider web.

A cutting board clatters to the floor,
spilling zucchini
that shaking hands don’t reach for.

Eyes seek comfort in each other,
too late, trying to process the news
as she smiles down
from her poppy field,
hugging the sun to her chest.