Kel(s)

I woke up today with smoke clinging to my curls in woods big enough to swallow me whole. No one would ever know. How terrifying. How exciting. How lovely it would be to disappear sometimes.

I drove home tonight under a sky that looked like candy and California. It was big enough to swallow me too, but it was untouchable. Birds flew high in it just to try but fell short. I stuck my tongue out and tasted this afternoon’s rain. I was hoping to taste the sun, and jellybeans.

I don’t say these kinds of things out loud, but I don’t know what else to say, so I just keep quiet. I always feel so far away from everyone else in a room. I wish I could speak like a hug, a creek, converse with a carefree corn-shucking kind of ease you’d have shooting the summer evening breeze. Instead it’s the anxiety. The unsureness. Deliberately a few notes lower to hide my vulnerability. A stranger’s voice coming from a too-tough mask. I’m so lost, I couldn’t even tell you what’s under it.

I spent so long packing away the too much, the not enough, trying to fit into boxes I thought would shape me that I’ve since become shapeless. Just pixels and hard edges. I can feel the one my heart is in beneath my chest. It hurts to breathe in. I don’t know when it last was opened to the sun.

I have so little hope that I’ll feel something again that I sometimes wish I could go back to some previous version of myself. One where I laughed, with a smile and the muscles in my belly. One where I believed in love. In anything, really. I want to hold someone’s name in my mouth and feel electricity in my veins.

I don’t pray much these days. Sometimes to tree buds, that they might teach me to become. Sometimes to the wind, that I could slip away with it. Sometimes to my body, that it’ll get out of bed. Mostly to my inner self, that I’ll be open to learning, to loving, to finding the strength to stay.

Perpetually becoming.

We are all capable of learning and loving.

Even you.

Even me.

See, my limbs all outstretched toward the light?

And how they’ve shed the fear, the fight?

I learned that from fall.

In the winter I learned how to sing.

In the spring my shoulder blades grew wings.

All summer I’ve been a kite.

The world makes more sense from the sky.

Oh, but my string’s wrapped round your fingers.

Your imprint lingers, and it’s not always kind.

Does mine?

I’m still wide awake in the dark,

make art in harmony with moon phases,

write down a few phrases,

I’ll probably change them,

you know I’m always rearranging.

The fire’s still raging, but it’s for the right cause.

I don’t feel so lost.

I look and try to truly see.

I’m letting myself be.

I’d like to tell you about it over a cup of tea.

But I don’t think you’d hear me.

I dance to music sung by earth under sun.

My journey forward’s never done.

My head feels better in warmer weather.

I’m not a creature to be kept indoors.

I yearn for more than just existing.

My body was twisted but it’s becoming strong.

My voice was buried but now it’s a song.

I keep proving myself wrong for

every time the darkness in my head said

I’d be better off dead.

I find balance in the smallest parts of me.

I find the space in which to breathe.

The tide is low.

Love’s a boat.

Don’t let me go.

It’s that time of year again

where the trees have been undressed

by winter’s rough fingers

stripped bare and exposed and

left cold to shiver

but they stand strong and still and

write their sadness against the sky

so that a passerby might look up

and read their story

learn the allegory of changing with the

seasons even though there’s

a thousand reasons

to stop growing

we don’t

Somewhere

along the way

winter

stopped sounding like sadness

it’s still there

but it doesn’t live in me

anymore

my heart has learned

how to be an open door

how even the bare bones of a tree

are a home

and now their branches don’t look

so vulnerable or exposed

but more like lovers tangled up

under a blanket of snow

Listen

they say

anything is free to come in

if it nourishes me

everything else

can drift away with the wind

and it doesn’t have to feel like absence

when it’s just making room

I took a walk last night and

a flock of pigeons

were dancing in the sky

practicing formations of flight

and there was a girl

with enchanted eyes

walking and reading a book

letting passerbys have a look

at her soul

and above us the half moon

smiled down on it all as the

last bit of sunlight kissed

the tops of buildings goodnight

and isn't it lovely

to see the wings of things

my heart could just take flight

if it wasn't so heavy

if it wasn't so inclined to breaking

at strangers

sleeping in doorways with

wings clipped

hopes frayed

I wish I could lend them mine

but they're still coming in

and I'll probably spend tomorrow

crash landing again

these feathers don't always work

in bad weather

but I hope that anyone

who passes by me on the street

might wonder why each step

looks more like a leap

or why I wear a distant stare skyward

when I'm thinking about what

the birds are flying toward

//

I took a walk today

thinking I might join the flock

but the sun was gone

and so were they

I searched the sky

and a raindrop landed in my eye