mason left ajar

is an art

to be good at

my goosebump skin

as rough and unduly wearied fingers

make quick work of saying goodbye

unsavory and ill-fated

released of their ownership like

a farmer whose tagged cow

has broken free

did she delight in being kept?

did she dream of a wild life

with the wind tickling her precious

pink nose and her big

drooping, beautiful

wet eyes?

fickle white lashes line them

as she lays gently in a grass

dotted with purple flowers.

somewhere else, i am

laying under the lights of

my bedroom

as i am ruefully untagged

uncaged, unmarked

begrudgingly returned my autonomy

that has been beating against my

chest for freedom

fluttering like

the butterfly that has landed

on the ear of our precious cow

she can feel it’s wings thumping

softly against her while

the grasses sway quietly

warm, sunbaked.

that soft beat is reminiscent of

a baby she loved that was taken

too soon, one she

tried to protect.

i don’t hold it against her, and

i know similarly

she is thinking of me,

sensing only my newfound freedom

and a whisper of the girl

that i used to be.

The bewilderment of love.1

For when your heart is bursting yet echoes of love lost are ringing in your ears.

my grandmother’s recipe cards, 1979

how many birthdays

did you give the gift

of tradition

to me?

how many years have

you held on to

hand written scraps

that remind you of someone

you used to be?

cakes baked with love,

imbued with memories,

create a brighter future

for your broken family.

.:.:.:..::.:..:::…:..:….::..::.:.:…

I rifled through my grandmother’s recipe holder while i was at her house for christmas. The holder, decorated with large 60’s day-glo flowers, belonged to my great grandmother. She was not a matronly woman to say the least, but did leave a few recipes in the organizer for my mimi to begin her new life with when she got married. Written in her idyllic flowering script are several garish american-ish recipes she very likely never made. I wonder why she collected these for a daughter she was marrying off too young, and if in this way she was attempting to gift her some sense of normalcy. As though, if my mimi had a few recipes for frito pie under her belt, she might be safe in her transition into womanhood.

She wasn’t.

As her ship rocked through those uncertain years, my mimi curated her own collection of recipes shared by friends and neighbors. Instructions lovingly collected on the back of a postcard became her tether to an adulthood thrust upon her. In a different, successful marriage she took note of what was well received by her family, having her young children writing down their own version of treats they made together. Recipes which I can vividly recall us making together, in my girlhood.

I hadn’t realized then the importance of her collection. Not only in her recipes, but in the maintaining of a home held together with sentiment, bursting at the seams with forlorn nostalgia. And for every birthday, her greatest act of love was observed ; the recreation of a carrot cake recipe clipped from a newspaper by a 15-year old girl baking a 1st birthday cake.

I haven’t been fearless enough to ask her how relevant these physical manifestations are to her sense of security in the life she has built.

I am afraid of the answer as a girl not yet grown enough to get rid of her toys. When do you outgrow the sense of comfort of possessions kept safe? When does the value of growth outshine the comfort of a past memorialized?

As I ask myself these questions, I think about the woman my grandmother is today. I do not see her collections as an act of clinging to the past. On the walls of her home there are an appropriate amount of painful photographs, loved ones who left her too soon.

Though I know, as I discovered in my childhood, the section deep in her closet full of clothes a disgruntled young mother might have worn once. Clothes a grown woman has yet to be ready to let go of, for the pain of the past is felt too deep, and the brutal uncertainties of the present felt too strong.

i can’t help but look all around me

for some sign of the time gone

barreling past

to another walking by i probably

look astounded at the world

around me but

inside i am grappling for some

foothold of remembrance

a childhood meal taken into

a grown woman’s mouth

fingers that have become

long and expressive still

painted that sparkling pink

a saturday morning without cartoons

yet made animated by your lover

like a music-box doll you spin

a ballerina out of control

smiling and twirling, crazed

frenzied and frothing for someone

because you don’t need a knight now

but maybe you did back then

be the princess in your world

and mold it to your very liking

remember that girl left unsaved,

weeping an utter lack of control

dance into your potential

soothe her wishful soul

⠄･ ⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄ ⠄･ ⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄ ⠄･ ⋆ ･

recently, the trajectory of my near future changed drastically. i got a job (!) which was a huge weight lifted off my young and weary back. to say that i was overjoyed at the news is a gross understatement. i felt almost vindicated , as if i was being rewarded some great justice for the suffering in my life. i cried on my turkey sandwich and my mom thanked god. though days later, this deep churning fear of unhappiness and a lack of freedom has taken hold of me. it is a coiled and greasy eel, lashing through my teeth when i smile so that others get a glimpse of the turmoil inside me. i feel the most detached from girlhood i ever have, and why does this make me as queasy as it does?

it is natural to grow up, but i’m struggling to cope. what will they see me as if not an extension of my dreams and naiveties?

posted by itsnothewayoukiss on instagram

i saw the octopus project live in concert earlier this year. to many people living in austin that doesn’t mean much, as the band has been around a long time and never really got the love it deserved. however, within the last four years they have come to mean a lot to me and now represent this strange time i’ve found myself in. there is a magical type of hell in between adolescence and adulthood, where your childhood memories are no longer the largest context within who you are. actions become the loudest form of expression and are the way in which we perceive each other. if you hold that girl very close to your heart, you have to choose every day to betray her and grow into an adult. there may be a way to do both, to protect her and yet flourish into accountability, i am still trying to figure that out. for a long time i thought being the best version of me meant honoring the past, using the things i have been through to color my world and my relationships. i realize in doing this i am choose to remain stagnant, to prioritize where i have been instead of welcoming the uncertainty of where i could go. change is something worse than scary, though learning maturity can make life feel real.

savoring the beauty in music is better when you’ve lived enough to know what it feels like. nostalgia becomes more indulgent the further away i get from sparkling adolescence, drug-like and dizzying in its’ simplicity.

this article by the chronicle is written about the artist who does the animation for an octopus project music video that is an ultimate comfort to me. W.A Brenner, the journalist, has notes about Srinivasan’s appearance, stating “[she] is smiling uncertainly, her pretty face framed on both sides by shoulder-length hair like trickling liquid licorice.” Srinivasan’s art is childish and colorful in a lovely way, and is punctuated beautifully by the song in the music video. I wondered how she felt after reading the article and if she noticed there was more said about how she looks rather than the qualities of her creations. To me this is another example of betraying the girl inside you for adulthood, and particularly success. Must there be a beautiful girl behind every talented woman? She mentions in the article having made some ugly paintings when she was young and bold, or maybe cared less about what others thought, and I wait for the day in which I too stop myself from putting my own paintings on the wall. Can you find a new space for that girl inside you? Can she live in the things that you create?