Bruises

We used to meet at the empty brown warehouses
because their boarded in windows smelled like secrets,
kept the cold grey boredom of winter
from our throats.
The soil around them was, like the rest, forgotten
and filled with dry glass, rusted iron,
and daffodils.
Growing every Spring, around the ghosts,
sunshine in a minefield. Miracles.
One winter day we took rocks
and dug up the soil, pulled each perennial bulb
from the gravel, and,
with shards of glass we cut them apart.
Hundreds of precise surgeries, searching
for organs shaped like the heart.
Leaving next Spring's blooms
in bruised strips on the broken pavement.
Maybe it was everything we knew of promise,
all we understood of hope.

Badlands

You asked me what I was most afraid of in the world
But with you beside me, I couldn't think of one thing

Then, trust

And sometimes it is easy to dismiss the world. To say, it is too hard here and too cutting. To lock up your heart in a concrete box in the hope it will survive an earthquake or a hurricane. Lock up your most valuable treasures, your impossible dreams, your soft shelled ideals, your trust and vulnerability, out of fear of how the world might break them.

But the world is tricky. It has soft green spring shoots that will curl through the cracks in your walls. It has autumn winds that will whistle at you until you cannot help but answer. And it takes only a moment, when the sun comes spilling from the horizon for your walls to keep the world at bay to crumble. Let them fall. You were never meant to be kept behind closed doors. You were meant to shine. You were meant to shout. You were meant to live.
Oh, wild one, you were born for this.

Anthem

Ring the bells that still can ring
forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything
that's how the light gets in

-Leonard Cohen

Dear Summer

Hi. I think we'd better talk. Because the days are getting shorter and colder, and you are slipping from my fingers with an inevitability borne of axis imperfections and star alignments, and I'm afraid to let you go. I don't think you're surprised, summer. You knew how it would happen. You know the danger you are to the restless heart.

I have been back now for over a month. More than thirty days of hanging your snapshots on my walls and telling stories of you to remind myself you were real and waking up from dreams to realize I can't remember how it felt to be held in his arms. I'm finding that your absence is leaving room for cold things, for self-doubt and uncertainty and twisted flaws to creep under my floorboards. 

You offered me this vision, you see, of what life could look like if lived with a willingness to throw my heart wide open. I lived within this dream, worked long hours to find it, burned and cut myself in my heady desire, poured it out with endless coffees, searched for it alongside the chipped and tangled souls I found were an equal and essential part of this dream. In the end, I was walked to it by many who were also willing to be part of this idea, this community born of a generosity of spirit that amounts to grace. Summer, you let me realize that my ideals were more than ornamental, but that they need to be taken from their glass cases and used for the practical purposes for which they were made. Some were cracked or broken in the process, and I learned that this too is okay. Glass shines even more when you can see the cracks, and I learned to not assume it needs fixing but to recognize it as beautiful and meaningful.

And while I was doing this, summer, you offered me a million things to fall in love with, and then dared me to do it. And I did. I fell in love with a yellow stone house and a home full of strangers and streets that never travel straight and the sound of ovens opening and the way he brushed my pinkie finger driving down those country roads at sunset. But then I left, as I knew I would. With his fingerprints on my waist and a handful of promises we barely tried to keep.

And this isn't a sad story, summer. I came back to a home with dried flowers and art hung walls, a ceiling covered in stars and a door that is always opening to welcome people that I love.Yet still I'm restless. And still I'm tired of sitting when I know what it means to simply do instead. And still I'm finding scars on my heart from you, from everything I did in your name, from each perfect moment that follow me now in dreams and unwritten love letters. But this is not a tale of regret summer, though I handed out pieces of myself that I can never retrieve in order to cling to your magic, and now I wonder how to fill those holes. What I gave was no more than what I was given to hold, I think. Fusion has its costs.

Summer, I am bad at goodbyes. Because my heart is aching for you still, and it might go on doing it until I see you again. It might take some time, summer. I can't promise who I'll be when you see me next, what weaknesses and follies will be mine. I have spent a month without you and already I am afraid I'm losing the woman I was when you were mine. But I know that I will love you summer, always. Will you wait for me?

-M

August

Hot summer nights
the fan's constant hum.
As the people pause,
portraits caught in lit windows
as they step outside with naked feet
as they search the blind heavens
for some sign of the stars

And you and I, here
doing what people do
What the conditional acceptance of our birth
prepared us for the moment we drew breath.

The way I'm doing now, inhaling to hold
a moment that was gone
before the warm skin beneath my fingertips
before the thin skin over your eyes opened
before I could be lost.

And in the background, I could see
The shape of us, as we ran
through the lightning storm
My yellow dress dripping rain
your heartbeat's thunder under my ear
A shape I tried to etch into my heart
A shape I begged the springy muscle to remember.

I don't know so much about beauty
how to recognize it, call it by name
I know only the soft currents of the blood
and the way the tides work
One an instinct that held me to your chest
One the salty undertow calling me home
And that one word we held on our tongues the whole time
Goodbye

We Accept The Love We Think We Deserve

He touches me like I'm made of gold, something precious and unbelievable, a miracle of sinews and skin. He says my hips look like they've been painted, traces the lines of my legs like something holy.

And it terrified me, this reverence. Who can stand up to such inspection? To have someone treat each of your body parts like small treasures, perfect pieces of a whole? I felt sure he was only missing the fine details, that I had somehow managed to hide the flaws, if only in a temporary way. I shook off his compliments in a certainty that he would soon see differently.

It took me all this time to recognize that I was the blinded one, that the imperfections I associated with a bathroom mirror or a bathing suit were not faults to him, but things to fall in love with.

It took me all this time to recognize it. It will take me longer still to believe it.
The world is full of things that cry, again and again, you are beautiful. 
When did we stop listening? 

 

Seasickness

I can feel it, rising from the concrete confines
of this landlocked cityscape
A dull ache like homesickness, not tied to structures
but to the open expanse of depth
Seasickness, it might be called

My heart craves the ocean
My body thirsts for saltwater
the stinging roll of it a strength beyond intention

There is a reason, you know
why we carry salt through our veins
why our tears run saline rivers.
We cannot hold ourselves back
from the shining, secret water
it pulls us, it seeps from our very pores.

I am just one more seasick lover
offering worthless poems to the unmoved Pacific
Recognizing, at last, the siren song for it's truth:
Never give your heart to the sea
For she will hold it forever and you will never be whole

Too late.

River Bottom

When did we think it would end?
Never?
We who wear our invincibility on our sleeve
Careless in the heat of youth

They say you don't see the ending until it hits you.
And though we laughed, it seems they were right this time.
Wild creature, you were never meant
to be still.

Oh I am far from home today,
And miles away from the sea.

Daily

Anger is a tangible being
when it confronts you from desperate eyes.
You asked if I was scared
and I spoke the truth when I said no.
Though your spitting face, with it dishevelled beard and manic eyes
was barely four inches from my own
and you spoke knowingly of crushing skulls into brain membranes
with a certainty I won't pretend to admire.

But Karl, you hold your anger so tightly
and I can see why.
This toughness belongs to you, it is yours to wear, to own.
It cannot be shuffled along by policemen at night,
cannot be kicked out by phone calls made in desperate  surrender
cannot be stolen by another haunted soul on these city streets
leaving you empty handed
and angry, as always.
It seems your best, your only defence
against a world that has forgotten how to love you
(perhaps it never knew).

And all this because you just wanted
a fucking buzz cut.
Wanted to cut away your long, lank trappings,
reveal the naked skin, the scars you might
recognize for what they are - healed.
Instead you sat on your sleeping bag across the street,
calling out your frustrated agony to those that passed.
While the wind lifted, ever so gently, the roughened tendrils
Of your thick grey hair.

And I sat at the window, reading poetry from a book,
as though it were not right here
in front of me.

Storm Warning

They say of lightning
That it never strikes in the same spot twice.
But I feel like once might be enough.

Second Spring

I've been through three seasons this week. It snowed the day I arrived, as though the blue-black clouds had forgotten it was May and past time to go. Then it rained, like it does in early Spring, when the smell of wet soil settles deep into your lungs, spongy and filled with life. And today the sun burst into flame. The smell of hot pavement rose heavy from the streets below where I sat, on the sticky black roof of this yellow-bricked home I am learning quickly to love.

One week. Three seasons. 2807 miles. I landed here almost by accident, driven by an inescapable desire for new sights and sounds, a need to run to something, not just away. And I believe I've found it. In a small kitchen. With my hands deep into 40 cups of chopped vegetables, face smeared by flour, drenched in rinse water, with aching feet, and mind full of ideals that I am living out. Ideals of community and connection. Ideals of shared space and unexpected capabilities. And these are driven by the simple vehicle of making food, of conversations and laughter. It is that easy. It is that hard.

And it doesn't mean that I've made a clean escape. Those three words you handed to me like a fake fruit, perfect and empty, have left their mark even across this distance. I won't pretend I passed blithely over your arms as they held someone new. I know their shape too well for that. But I am changing seasons. Again. And my sun-warmed heart is too full to hold onto these stings.

The cherry blossoms that are long gone in Victoria are just out here. It is my second spring of the year, a re-gifting of time I thought already gone for good.
Welcome, summer of inspiration, summer of astounding joy.

- M

Once

They say broken heart as though it is clean. As though it happens once and is done. They don't have word for the way it can crack again and again, and the way it mends itself when you walk away (crooked). Our language holds no description for an exhaustive, silent splintering.

"The darkest way into a heart, is through the part that breaks" - Jeremy Fisher

From Space

When they came back from space
they spoke of the Earth
How it looked,
so clear and surprisingly open.
No telling frontiers
Just vast lands and wild seas.

I think maybe this is true of the heart
Held within the fence of ribs
and unyielding bone
Surrounded by the judgmental
whispering of the blood.

But the heart itself is smooth and borderless
Each joyful beat a boundary-breaking freedom that cries
Love, Love, Love

What they tell you is wrong

I've always been an idealist. I believe that justice is possible, that humans are naturally built for caring, that equality and natural balance and peace are utterly attainable ends. And for practically as long as I have been a determined idealist, people have tried to stamp it out of me. High school teachers, fellow students, well intentioned adults, friends. Their cynicism and disgust was supposed to protect me, to remind me that life cannot be what it seems from my privileged position. And so, to these misguided, jaded people I say this: stop talking. My idealism might be unreasonable, but you know what? The world needs it. It needs me and every other idealistic citizen (including you) it can get to demand social justice and environmental action and then work for it.

 A few weeks ago I watched Vandana Shiva take the stage, and in a few short sentences, illuminate the world that I want to be a part of. A world of never-ending human capacity for empathy and community. A world where what is grown is sacred, where neighbours are family, where food is savoured and time is wasted and love is tangible and fellowship is inescapable. As Vandana Shiva said, never, in the history of human kind, has what is evil persisted. Joy persists. Hope persists. Faith and hard work and tremendous trust persist. Love persists. And in that understanding, we idealists cannot fail. There will always be those who believe that the world is beautiful, those who can never be bought, those whose courage is unwavering, whose passion is unstoppable and who, with unreserved joy, will continue to sing the praises of our only home, always. This is a tidal wave, a storm surge, a revolution. This is a homecoming. Count yourself in, friends. 

Of course it's idealistic. Of course it's unreasonable. Of course it's true.

Lessons in Navigation

There was a strange perfection to your words
and the way your arms held me, solid as oak boughs
I've been climbing, searching for the sky.

Oh if I could, for a minute set down
the fleeting, unbound wind for steady tides
Perhaps I would find my way to you.

But I set my compass
To the far off promise of horizons
Instead of the incalculable, stagnant stars

And I took measure by the growing stalks of daffodil
And not the ancient and unchanging rock
I should have known to trust.

It is a heavy thing to carry,
this heart that pulls at the sinews
and veins that tether it

It is a heavy thing to carry
This heart that yearns to leave
This heart that longs to be loved.

Revelation

"So throw away those lamentations, we both know them all too well.

If there's a book of jubilation, we'll have to write it for ourselves."

-Josh Ritter

Headlights

This is certainly not love. Not longing, exactly, no broken hearts. Perhaps heartache, perhaps the still more dangerous heart hope. I used to believe that love was a destination at the end of  a freeway, straight and swift as the blurred Autobahns of last Spring. But I believe there are more twists and potholes than suspected. Most love lanes have already been patched up and re-paved, but their flaws can't be erased because you can feel them every time you drive those routes again.

 I was just a dead end street on yours. One you turned down anyways, by accident or perhaps because there is freedom to be found in getting lost. But I am not your destination, not the moment where you turn off the ignition and your body sinks into the joy of solid ground again, heavy as a heartbeat. I am not love. But I was part of the journey, and I have to keep reminding myself that that was enough. This is enough.

My happiness is, after all, a matter of self-determination. I lay claim to it as a girl who's never let her joy depend on anything her legs couldn't reach, anything her hands couldn't hold. Good luck on your road. Someday I'll be driving by on my own, parallel, leaving only the rush of wheels on road and the blur of speeding headlights to remind you I was here.

Until then,

-M

Of Resolutions

It's almost Spring here. Every day, you can feel it coming closer, curling out of the ground with the cherry tree blossoms and the first of the daffodils. I keep waking at night to the sound of rain, and I can smell it in the saturated breeze. I never sleep with the window closed these nights.

 At the beginning of this year, I made some New Year's Resolutions, as we who are never tired of hoping are wont to do. One of my main goals was balance; I need to be able to keep an equilibrium between all those things in my life which are important to me.

I know I need to pay more attention to school, to apply myself with a more rigorous attitude, to live out my potential, to earn my scholarship, to prove myself. But it's hard, in the bewitching time between seasons when every fibre of me longs to run from the responsibilities that hold me, as tiresome and necessary as an anchor. I will tell you that over the past week I have filled my days with bluegrass music in cafes at night, with frisbee games and homemade pizza. I've woken early to spend hours in the forest doing restoration, and slept late after nights of laughing and singing and absurdity. I've spent more time than I'd care to recount on daydreams and read too long into the night. I've eaten cookies I didn't deserve, just to reward myself for being joyful, and watched movies of faraway places from a pile of blankets and pillows.

I really do need to crack down and methodically cross off the tasks of my ever increasing to-do list. And soon. But to spend time on what makes you happy is a skill unto itself, one not enough work is put into. You don't have to look far into the headlines to realize that simply to be happy is an accomplishment of astronomic proportions. The world can never have enough joy. To find your own, and add it to that larger sum is a noble resolution indeed.

-M

Baptism

Welcome!

I have always been entranced by fresh new pages; I've always loved beginnings. I will tell you now, there are no answers to be found here, just stories and happy folly. Just the reminder of senses that I too often forget. The smell of salty Island seaweed, the taste of blackberries at the tail end of summer, the sound of crisp golden leaves, the sight of purple hazy mountains at dusk, the bittersweet way wild geese are always leaving and the feel of early winter rain, like some holy baptism.

These are some things which I hold dear, and I offer them up to you, because I have heard that what you love best in the world is better still when shared.

I hope this finds you laughing. I hope this finds you happy. I hope this finds you blessed.

After all, there is not enough room between the heart, the head and the hands for anything but joy.

- A hopeful heartholder