The epicenter of existence, The extension of mother nature. The woman; Who is continuous with this earth, lightning reaching down to touch her fingertips, the lithosphere kissing the soles of her feet. A soft heart, with an electrical storm. How divine to be as strong as she is gentle. Woman, you did not just march, you thundered And the whole world heard.

This is how you fight back: Take the salt from your tears and amass a raging ocean from it. Spindle your cries into its own axis and unleash a sweeping hurricane. Mourn, and mourn, and mourn, for where we stand, gravity persists. And those with the heaviest hearts plant their feet into the earth the strongest. You are a force of nature, the salt of this earth, and this earth bends for nobody. So when they tell you to move, what do you say?

Aren't all the good stories always like this? Passed from one mouth to another with one or two things melting into the tongues of those who preach the sanctified word. Forever lost, altered history. We're seventy years worth of good stories and for seventy years, many have tried to tell them. But somehow in all the madness of good people and bad people of right and wrong they forgot to tell the story of how much I love you. As if the heavy slope of my shoulders doesn't write a hundred paragraphs. As if the way I look at you doesn't write the singular ending. You are my epilogue, my prologue, and every chapter that exists in between. Everybody, sit down. I have a story to tell.

Happy birthday! I hope it's been absolutely lovely and that you have a great year

People talk about us in mere tragedy, as if all we did was hurt and crack and break until time crystallized and we slept a hundred years. But all I remember  are crow's feet at the corner of your eyes and laugh lines that feel like the gravity of the universe. And I loved you. I remember how much I unfathomably loved you. People talk about us in mere tragedy, but infrequent are tragedies that do not have a speck of hope, a dreg of happiness, a split-second joy. Many times we were tragic. But many times we were happy too.

The danger in you is that you have made me want things with such ferocity. The colors of your eyes, the nuances of your voice. Years and years without and I was fine. Now a day deprived, I feel drowned and parched at the same time. There is no 'falling' in love. There is only spinning madly.

I realize his face doesn't light up the way it used to anymore. My regret stills small in the darkness. But damn it, the hope--the hope in me dares to reignite the sun.