To Feel Is To Be

She is strength and perseverance, bows only to herself

Patience is balancing within your own world, to ride the waves as they crash against you

It shows in her eyes, thinly veiled flames burn away her expressions

She is tense, prepared to strike at any moment. Coiled springs and jarred lightning

Nobody knows if she’ll wait forever.

I just want to know love

Nobody needs to remember my name

I only ask that I can support myself and those around me

With love comes with grief, infinitely entwined from the beginning of it all

Surely it isn’t too much to ask; enough to survive? I don’t need everything, just enough

But by the rings of grief that I’ve grown through?

Sweet springs and summers

Long forgotten in favor of the wildfire burns and lightning strikes.

A cruel joy found in pruning my own rotted branches

No longer burdened by their scars or weight

Oh, next month…

The only truth was that;

in complete disregard for the natural flow of time

(Thick, honeyed tea)

It could be seconds or lifetimes away

Dazed in an unbreakable trance

Storm clouds peer down on ancient oak groves

Unwavering foundation challenged by ravaging forces.

Crashing of teeth, power struggle

In the eye of the storm, they find safety in each other

Reliable and sturdy, driven by thirst to keep such a canopy afloat.

Atop her saddle, her smile flashes from underneath the brim of her hat. Electric.

Hands calloused and dry in their grip around smooth leather reigns. Her mount confident and precise with every stomp of his hooves. You feel them in your chest. Thundering.

A nod and she’s off, crashing down the path after the sunrise. Leather tassels crack in the wind. Until hooves are worn and the horizon is gone. Endless.

Early spring is her favorite. Fresh life in every direction. Foggy citrus groves in bloom. Fawns and calves hidden in the wet grass. Pure.

You’ll only ever have her for a moment. Whispering western winds call her home to her people. She lingers, showering you with her affection, an all-consuming presence. Her chilled touch is the only thing that soothes your weary bones. Revitalizing.

Soothing salve across burnt skin

I can see her freckles now, amber flecks adorn her shoulders

A thousand minuscule kisses, scattered across her jaw

Wildflowers in her hair, she lays her head among a pillow of fog

Dusk pulls her blanket snugly across the sky, pricked with starlight

Are we testing my willpower?

My constitution, perhaps?

How do I dress to feel less boyish? To be less a clone of my father?

Shouldn’t I have had romantic relationships by now? What else is there to do with hair? And what the shit is mascara?

Raised as an eldest son, burdened as the eldest daughter. Are we surprised I’m lagging behind?

What more of me is left to give?

My inner child, bruised into submission. Longing for her time back. Are we taking from her?

My inner teen, bitter and brimming with rage. Nothing but her own wit to raise her. She still hasn’t given enough?

I’m hollow and unmoored. Adrift in the storm front of my adulthood. Woefully unprepared for the journey.

A dream, soured by my worst fears come to life?

Time must pass slower in this type of sleep, it almost feels real. There’s no way this is actually still happening.

Women who assume that my own father is my husband.

*He must be rich*

*Good for her!*

*Divorced and married the secretary!*

Is that what we expect now? The default?

My own mother, absent from most of life by choice. Physically present, mentally reliving, idolizing, and desperately clinging to her past.

*She must be crazy*

*That’s genetic you know*

How do you explain generational wounds to those that caused them? Share the load? Potentially hurt more? Bear it alone?

A mother wound is not so easily sown. Such injuries only heal with generations.

A low humming call, once a comfort, now simply a reminder of the constant fight or flight I’ve been in for years.

Is it not enough to fight with your own mind? Have I not done a good enough job convincing everyone that I’m okay? Spiraling is an easy rabbit hole these days.

Hung by their brilliant orange feet, I will string my doves up, one by one. I imagine they’re dead, heads bobbling limply at my hip as I collect far past my limit.

One for my grandmother, who I never said goodbye to.

A second for my mother, who often has me carry her own doves.

Each feathered body weighing more than the pit in my stomach, entirely holding me in place at times as I adjust to each addition to my string of orange feet and dangling heads.

One for my broken heart. What more can it take?

Someone should stop me. (Help me?) A warden to take some of my burden and release me to return home.

Raised in this urban prison too many call home. Each attempt to scatter myself to those cool rural winds ends in dirt on my name as I return home. Tail between my legs.

Is it wrong to long for things your bloodline has unlearned over generations? Separated from the earth herself over years of industrialization that wove its way between people and their wild spaces.

I want nothing more than a sky big enough for my dreams and all of the stars in the galaxy to hang above me at night.

I should have known it was all too perfect to last. Born a wildflower in a concrete desert. I am destined to ache for a life of watching the morning fog roll in over the river, distant calves bawling for breakfast.

I’ll clean my car.

Purge the history of you in my spaces.

Maybe then, I won’t feel such presence of you

After you’re gone.

That’s what survivors do after storms

My armor once again

Layers chafe against this new wound

Bare to none but those you trust

Which eyes am I wearing today?

Are they my mother’s

Pale green with a lifetime of envy behind them

Maybe my father’s

Steel blue walls of duty to hide behind

Is it worse if they’re my own?

As a child I had been clear: the mark would end with me. I would have mine removed.

I did not understand the weary sadness in my mother’s eyes when I told her this.

We thought I never grew into one. I’d missed the genes. But I knew it was there all along, in plain sight and pale to blend with my father’s nose.

My mother never did understand the profound sadness in my eyes when she mistook my mark for acne. Harsh pinching would never remove it from my skin.

Almost as if she too wished that I wasn’t hers.