Canvas

I want to show you love 

Finger paint on your soul

The colors I feel when I’m with you

The ones I feel without you

Loss

Grief

Need

Release

Stroke by stroke 

Reeling

Burning

My beautiful rhythm

Words on my tongue

My night 

My music

My constellation

Encapsulating every inch of you

With the reflection of the beauty you emit

I want to finger paint upon your soul

The colors I feel,

My love

Carapace

Content with discontentment,

Knowing I will never taste your ripening lips 

Or fill my lungs with your oxygen.

Just waiting on sidelines.

Content with discontentment 

I know every inch of you.

Your chest having never grazed my cheek,

But my fingers have tattooed their imprint on your skin 

A thousand times in my mind.

Discontent,

Knowing this gnawing at my soul will never be requited.

Content, 

Believing your soul will stretch its arms to find another.

Discontent,

Knowing it will never be mine.

A Whole New World

After a bit of crying over the possible fates of my LGBTQ, black, Latino, Muslim, and disabled brothers and sisters, I prayed harder than I have in awhile. That a "love bomb" would drop on our new president and he would be so filled with love for the citizens of this country that he would see the extreme and immense value of everyone in this nation. That his heart would be changed toward the positive regarding civil rights, justice, the broken-hearted, the disenfranchised, and the voiceless.


I then decided to resolve to love my neighbor better, to stand up for those whose rights may hang in the balance, to show kindness to a stranger, the treat our planet as a gift and not a wastebasket.


Sunday, I will go to my incredibly inclusive evangelical church lead by my gay pastor and find some peace. Because in the end, love is greater than any fear or hate the world can dish out! Therefore collectively we people, bound by and in love, are greater than this one moment in history.

A Night Visitor

Oh, yes! I hear you tapping at my window

Beckoning me closer 

A cool breath of impulsivity on my cheek

Tonight’s a nice night for a flight you purr.

Open the window. Dance in the stardust, my angel.

But we both know

You have all the subtlety of a Sylvia Plath novel. 

And this will end like all your other attempts—

Silenced by the dagger of my pen against your throat

Branding my defiance into the pages of your jugular: 

Dum vita est spes est!

So, come another night if you must

Entice me with belladonna’s perfume.

Enchant me with a melancholic dissonance. 

But all these gimmicks are simply 

Sequins in a tawdry floor show.

They do not stupefy or overpower me. 

You are missing the true magic:

A heart that pounds

Lungs that rise and fall in an orchestrated rhythm 

Ears that delight in children’s laughter

A nose that awaits freshly baked cookies.

You are outdone. You are outnumbered,

In this body, life abounds.

And where there is life, 

There is so much hope!

Vita

Oh my vita

To dine upon your skin

Tasting every honey dew dropped morsel of sweat 
That forges on your chest

Let me love you in Orlando

Taking flight through crisp waters

And broken waves

Making love upon bright beaches.

Ours was a gray kind of love

Seeping it's way past social morale or religious doctrine

Into the sand that wedged it's way between toes of ambiguity

With every biting crest

You relinquish sighs of guilt 

Into my lungs

And let me sustain you

With breaths of approbation

This sacred dance

Of flesh and spirit becoming one

Consecration 

Intertwined notes shaping our immortal symphony

We are music

We are the words carving Shakespeare’s sonnets

We are the the culmination of all that is pure and whole and holy

Let me be the voice to your quavering song 

Let me be the wine upon your barren lips

Taste me

Consume me

Shatter me.

The Bitch is Back

The bitch is back. Yes, that's right--my nemesis. She must have seen the bumper sticker, "ya'll can go to hell, I'm goin' to Texas," and decided it would be a nice vacation spot-- heat and all. I thought I may have heard her calling my name in the distant rumbling of thunder last week, but convinced myself it was simple paranoia. For a moment, I caught a glimpse of her insignia, like Zoro, burned out in the grass near my apartment. But, I turned my head for a second glance...and poof! It was gone. So, I thought nothing of it. Even, last week, when my husband's brakes went out, my dog was covered in infectious spots, and my son had an asthma attack all on the same day-- I just chalked it up to a rough one. I mean, everyone has those, right? However, when I walked into my new apartment this week, only to find the laundry room leaking water from a broken pipe, walls infested with mold and a bipolar air conditioning unit that couldn't decide between hot or cold air, I began to see her fingerprints everywhere.  Now I am certain she has come back like Lex Luthor on the heels of Superman, intent on nothing but my total destruction.  But I'm sorry. This week I'm not in the mood to play. This week, she has met her match. So wherever you are, Murphy Law, I hope you're ready. You're vacation's getting cut short. 'Cause, girl, I'm sending you straight back to hell!

Beauty From Injury

I awoke in a dizzied blur, aware of nothing but searing pain and a tube lodged awkwardly down my throat. Unable to speak, tears burned my cheeks, as I played a sadistic game of charades with the nurse keeping guard over me. “What do you want, honey?” Her voice was saccharine. I gestured toward the tube. She replied, “I’m sorry, but I can’t take it out. It’s helping you breathe.” My eyes released a flood. At that moment, I didn’t give a rip about breathing; I only wanted the pain to stop…anyway possible. 

Life coaches will remind their clients, to “stay present”. I truthfully had never really thought about or experienced that level of consciousness, until this point in time. I was definitely fully present, in this moment; and believe me, there was nothing I wouldn’t give to be a million miles away from here, soaking in the euphoric drip of morphine. Instead, the recently stitched up tear in my esophagus was made irate by a ribbed piece of plastic parked haphazardly on the fresh wound.

Only a week earlier, my orthopedic surgeon had made an egregious mistake while performing a double-level cervical fusion on my spine. At some point during the surgery, his scalpel slipped, tearing a large hole in my esophagus. This wasn’t realized until a week later, when I appeared miserably in the ER, with green, gravy-like pus oozing from my suture site.

I was filled with infection and a gaping hole in my throat when they rushed me into surgery to try their hardest to remedy the mistake.  This traumatic event turned into a six month process of hard-core antibiotics, being fed through a tube in my chest,  restless nights terrorized by nightmares of dying, and at last…recovery.

I’m not so sure, whether staying present was a positive in this case. In moments where I focused on my present circumstances, fear eroded my mind. Yet, when I was able to step outside of that pain and focus on a future where this one traumatic event was given a positive purpose, then I began to thrive.

   
I know everyone has trauma in his or her life. But perhaps it is in that pain, our stories can be shared, honestly, without playing emotional-charades. In this place of vulnerability, we feel understood, and genuine human connection can occur. This is where beauty and true art emerge.