she was baptized in dirty water.

You’re indifferent to it?

Are you, really?

Or, just pretending to be?

How do you move on from something when it’s in your face every day?

You move away?

Can you really?

Do you just shut your eyes to it and pretend it doesn’t exist?

What’s the difference between pretending to be okay and actually being okay?

Are we ever really okay?

- depends.

- who knows.

- maybe, but if it masks the pain, that's alright, yeah?

- you love what's in your face.

- you move closer.

- yes, you can.

- maybe for a second or two.

- one's an unskilled illusionist, the other, a master.

- when we're with the ones we love most, i believe so, yes.

Shadows play like children in the bright morning light, skirting across the grass and shift into shapes they are most comfortable in. Like us we sometimes shift into shapes searching to find that one thing that we feel most comfortable in –our own skin. 

In the vastness of this searching inward one sometimes only sees open blue sky, we each feel a deep need to find ourselves –some hope to find themselves lost in amongst the stars. It`s usually a sign that we hide in amongst the brightness of this light, it gives us strength when others glow around us. We align ourselves in the hopes that the galaxy of wonder that is our life will somehow place the signs out for us, like signposts giving us a clue to loving ourselves when the rest of the universe has given up on us. A guide to loving yourself is not hard to find, and when it happens sometimes it catches you by surprise. When that boy in school turns to you and says –I really wasn`t looking for you, I was looking at you and not really looking for anyone, but now that I see you, all I can say is that it’s this wonderful smile of yours that I can’t take my eyes off of. This person is a guide, and there will be many like him, or even her that will drop in and out of your life. They are not labelled as such, there is no tag that says to you point blank – Hi there, I’m your life guide for the next 2 hours, or 2 weeks, or 2 years.  The inward search starts with you, starts with things that make you feel alive and worth being loved, and it all starts with loving yourself, loving the skin you’re in, and loving those that love you back.

The inward search of loving yourself can sometimes be painful. One must look inside; crack the rib cage of your soul open to see what lurks betwixt hope and desire. What residual evil sleeps there in the dark light must be allowed to escape. Yes you’ll feel the tremor of that unknown terror leave, your body may convulse, your mind may race, and your heart may beat like the wings of a hummingbird, risking the oldest thought we remember –fight or flight. In that tender moment, your atoms rapidly reassemble the dreams you once had, or were haunted by, those that plagued you with the monsters under your bed, or in the closet hidden in your mind. These will soon become but a memory. As you become accustom to the skin you’re in, you will then begin to see who you are, what you are and where you want to go with your life. 

The guides that come in and out of your life will help you find that special something (or someone) that makes you feel everything you’ve never felt before. They linger in the reverberation of the fingertips that touch your soul. They’re the moments in life when you’re running around in that awkward haze, when you accidentally glance up at the sky, and find a tiny miracle hiding in the clouds. 

The guides will test you, nurture you, and knead you like discarded clay, but it is up to you to sculpt yourself into the person you wish to become. The things that make you feel most alive are the times and moments when you feel most dead; nights that haunt your sleep soon turn into morning without a moment’s notice. You become numb with mixed-emotions  –and then you begin to feel everything, all at once and almost wish you could feel nothing at all, if and when those emotions dances upon the precipice of your neck, that’s when you know. 

You dream, you wish, you pray for a sign. Meanwhile they have been there the whole time; all you need do is look around, listen to the guides that find you on their own paths of finding themselves. Accept the skin you’re in, it’s vital to finding the road to loving oneself. 

How might we begin this interlude of  coursing blood and hearts that thud? Should we start beneath that dress, which drapes your chest of bated breath? How the innuendo in the crescendo of your of your burgeoning bosom,  arouses desire in spires  below, where passion  grows?

My darling, we begin with ravenous lungs exhaling gin, your hips mingling with mine, our lives intertwined- a diminuendo of lights, timid fingers running over curves as passion ignites; must you force me to wait, for my legs to tremble and quake and stretch and shake?

Well, if I should partake in your plate of delights, musn’t I first feed the whites in my sight? Because you’re a creature of featured finesse in all that’s possessed in your sultry silhouette. But if I must delve right in, could I begin with trailing my fingers down your spine? I yearn to turn the vines that entwine ‘round your centerline. 

This flesh of ivory porcelain is sheathed in cracks and scars- so treat me carefully, darlin’…but won’t you fuck me so hard i see stars?

I’ve not seen Mars as of late, and if it’s constellations you wish to conceive, you best believe I’ll ruminate those craters you’ve covered because solar flares were once forgotten wounds, until the sun’s kiss swooned them so; and I’d surely  smother you in a supernova’s afterglow if it’d mean we’d sheen.