A Warning To My Future

Nobody told me about the day after trauma

That id go over to my grandmother's house and work in the garden

That id eat donuts and pull weeds and talk to cousins and friends and almost forget

Forget the violence id seen

And then something, a word, a picture, a thought slams me back into that moment

Transports me back to being scared and helpless and vulnerable and alone

And all of a sudden it passes and in expected to keep laughing and I do but only on the outside

Sometimes

Sometimes I get desperate, 

Sometimes the world screams too loudly and not loudly enough, too loudly for the music to drown out, but not loudly enough to drown out the chaos in my head. 

Sometimes it feels like the black cauldron is swirling in my brain, in that interminible space between the right and left ears there exists a tempest, a whirlwind that only I can hear and I have no miranda to request that her father stops his dreadful awefilled arts. 

Sometimes I play music on my phone, no headphones, the volume turned all the way up and I just lay in the dark waiting for the music to seep into my brain listening to the souls of those who feel like I do the pain of the world. 

Sometimes I hold my phone speaker up to my neck like a knife, not to harm but in a effort to heal, in the way that a surgeons scalpel opens to heal or a syringe enters to heal I try to force the vibrations of the music into my blood. 

Sometimes It’s not enough 

But sometimes ... It is

"I think I have cancer, no really I think I have cancer" she said as she shook his shoulders trying to get his attention

"babe last week you had the avian flu and the week before that you had ringworm and the week before that you thought you had meningitis"

"seriously though look I have a growth on my neck just below my ear" she pulled his hand around to feel what she was talking about, he felt the spot and yes there was something there

"okay, I'll call the doctor tomorrow and we will get it looked at" they went to bed peacefully and awoke with all the trappings of the next day forgetting about the previous nights conversation, she mentioned it a few more times and each time he promised he'd go with her to her doctors appointments, or remind her to call the doctor so they could go get it looked at

-but they never did, just like he didn't believe her when she was convinced her cough meant avian flu and her spot on her arm meant ringworm and her headache meant meningitis but this time... they should've

"Sit down" she said

"Stop fidgeting" he reminded

"I swear if you don't stop MOVING" they threatened

until one day one didn't

The teacher didn't say "Sit down" or "Stop moving" she said "here, when you get bored or finish an assignment I want you to describe to me what you are going to do on the playground"

This simple kindness to a small hyperactive child turned into teams of paper preoccupation detailing the grand adventures of various heroes, heroines, dragons and ponies as they battled vicious creatures discovered new locales and made friends along the way fostering forever in me a childlike wonder for the magic of the written word.

I miss the rain

Or better, i guess i miss the way it rained there

Fat heavy drops

Not like delicate tears on your skin but so full of water you could feel the individual impacts like your grandmother's hand patting you on the head

But just like grandmother's, not all rain was soft and kind, it also raged and thundered

Loud screaming into the night and the sound of those heavy blows on the roof like rocks from the heavens

To go out, to experience the storm was to feel whole and yet also wholly small

The rain is

Quiet, here

Tamed and angry in it's taming

Anger of futility

Anger of frustration

Maybe some others would call it gentle or kind or soft

But there just isn't enough of it to be those things

Not to me

To me it's just a drizzle, never more than a pattern of calm and too still even in it's movement

The last remnants of a still dying god killed long before it's time

The rain here is dead

And so

I miss the rain

Have you ever watched the death of a soul? 

I’m not talking physical death, I mean knowing someone and falling madly in love with their passion and then realizing that passion has left when you see them again 

Their eyes are flat and dull 

the spark is gone

When exhaustion overcomes ingenuity 

when that which you had loved has faded 

“What would you have me do? O Great and Powerful Man?” 

nothing, I would have you do naught but that which you wish 

“What would you have me be?” 

nothing, I only want what you are, I have no desire for you to be anything but what you will 

“So, what’s the catch? Why do you seek this?” 

beloved, you ask the wrong questions, 

“What then should I ask?” 

what will I do for you? 

“Fine, my darling, beloved, he who knows my soul, what would you do for the one who has laid claim to your heart?” 

I would thread flowers in your hair and worship you as you lay in fields of golden grain, I would remove all barriers before you and watch as you fly chasing the breeze. I would be your wings. I would be your home. I would put the universe in your hands because I want to see you tear it down and rebuild it in your image. I would see you become all that you could be, terrifying and powerful. I would tremble at your sight, but not with fear. I would love you and all that you are were and shalt be. 

Where I am From (again)

I am from warm hugs

From sweet child O` mine lullabies and a star wars bedtime story

I am from rowdy boys crowded around a bridge ready to jump

I am from puppies in a bin baying and crowding around a mother basset

I am from apple pie dreams and hands older than me and stories spoken over

Laughter and the smell of food cooking in the oven

I am from the morning

Warm sunshine smiles and daisy chain afternoons

Brothers with too tall bodies and too small sensibilities

Confused and wonderful

I am from a garage

Alternative rock, the smell of grease and men and fixing the problem

Pieces clicking together like a puzzle

I am from a field

Scratches bug bites and high grass

Scrapes and bruises falling out of trees and into fun

I am from costuming

Bright sequin, improbable characters, and laudable performances

Lines not quite memorized but somehow funnier that way

I am from competition

Racing past a sibling or cousin to get through the kitchen first without being scolded by that one aunt

To

Racing through the air trying to get to a ball just beyond my fingertips so I can pound it into the ground before it’s blocked

I am from a kitchen

Smells that evoke nostalgia in every southern heart

All the sisters, cousins, aunts and grandmother gathered in the kitchen with bustling mouths laughing as they cook turkey, potatoes and cranberry jam and the menfolk watch football and the kids play a façade of the game of the day

I am from elegance

Being taught table manners, learning how to walk in 6"s and how to do my makeup from a favored aunt for the prom

Learning how to be a lady

I am from vibrancy

Spinning sepia-tinged memories filled with stars dreams and sadness

I am from a field lying between my parents learning Draco, the dippers, mars, and planets chasing the sisters and running from Orion’s bow

I am from the stars

A new adult wandering the earth

My head in the clouds with lofty ideas, hopes, and longing to be the cause of change

I am from a promise

A promise to learn

A promise to live

A promise to laugh

A promise to cry

A promise to succeed

A promise to fail

A promise to be me

it feels so disingenuous and false to be writing a personal statement about how I wanted to save the world when I am applying to a university that  contributes to those issues. The world is ending and I am passing my time by trying to put on the facade of a higher class than I am so that what, do I can fit in? so I can get a job? what the fukc is the use of that

A speech spoken over the body of an enemy

There are things they don't tell you when you are a young bright rebel,

With the taste of wrath in your mouth, a rally cry in your ears, and a mission in your heart.

They didn't warn you of how blood bounces on snow when you are chomping at the bit for action against inaction.

They're stories of glory, not of sweat evaporating before it leaves your skin, never of the smell of blood in a forest cooling on the damp ground. Or the look of an empty battlefield.

But there are good things.

The satisfaction of a job well done, the knowledge that you're saving lives and times, like now, when one finally beheads one of the true evils.

The rush of relief in knowing that the broken bloody mass at your feet will never again cause pain like he once had and that his last moments were ones of misery, misery that you meted out as recompense for his crimes.

They send you out with a sword and a promise that your anger can be used for good and it's moments like this that make good on that promise.

Our righteous anger bubbles like lava, biting at injustice and growling at inaction.

We, the young and restless vibrantly bash against the rocks of tradition. Slowly changing the world, an inevitable tide never coming in fast enough for our liking.

We longed for change, we would burn the world and remake it in our image.

We would kill

We would bite and scratch and tear to protect what we love and seek truth and justice for all.

I walked amongst these thorns along a dangerous road, but I do not walk alone.

We stood and will stand together against conformity, relentless and strange, enigma on a cliff waiting for wings.