burnt ears

we’re healing here. all of us. i never get very personal, never talk about facts more than i talk about feelings, about emotions. i’m not a selfish person in real life but in writing i am, and i’m realizing that this is nothing to be ashamed of. it’s mother’s day, and mama told me to write slaughterhouse poetry. raw words. things that start with butcher knives and end with massacres. but that’s just it. i don’t have anything left inside of me to pillage. i have lied to myself for so long about so many things that the truest things that i can convey are through fiction. writing about myself no longer seems real. all i know are feelings, sentiments, and the things that keep me up at night. all i know is that the cicadas are coming back this summer. all i know is that everything is returning, that the birds keep flying north and south, that i’m starting to feel okay about saying goodbye to a lot of people because i know that we’ll meet again, sometime soon. time changes a lot of things. people grow, exponentially or glacially. people change according to their environment, adapting to new worlds, new universities, new countries. i read an article about my family that shook me up earlier this afternoon, but i’m learning that people can be different, they can be so different that it surprises you and amazes you and terrifies you. no story is black and white. everything is grey matter and we can never know for sure whose truth is true. my father is a greater man today than he ever was back then. my mother is healing, slowly. we’re all learning how to survive in this world where fewer and fewer people are willing to take a bullet for another. i don’t know myself at all, and it’s both terrible and wonderful that that is the case. but i’m growing. into what? i can’t tell. into who? i will never know. i hope you’re having a wonderful day. i hope you’re healing, whoever you are — wherever you are. i hope that you’re getting enough fluids and eating enough vegetables and that you have regular bowel movements. i hope you’re being selfish, at least for a little bit, because we all deserve it in some way or another. everyone deserves themselves. 

To feel this new and unnoticed, like walking down an empty street on the morning of the first warm day of the year. Everything is in its place and your heart is like an open window where all the birds fly right in.

Alice Walker

We act like we are stars; like we are little suns, making our own light and heat and creating life for others. But, we aren’t even planets. Nothing revolves around us. We are moons. Tiny chunks of rock orbiting something bigger than us. Our main function: to reflect the light. That is what we are made for.