Tall, broad shoulders
Pushed back so he seems larger than the body he was born in.
Sweat on his forehead and his hands so firmly placed on each side of the pulpit.
Talking about a language only he can summon in you,
Using his holy hands to pull it out of your mouth.
Stay still.
My body is God's.
My mind is lost.
If I have nothing else,
Atleast I have faith.

I used to look in the mirror and see someone else's body. Their eyes weren't mine and they would mouth words to me, knowing I never learned how to read lips.
It became a silent game of me studying every crack in your face and you dedicating every moment to try and teach me how to hear you.

My mom would tell people I had an imaginary friend, and that it was
"So cute" how I would sit for hours with someone no one else could see.

I never figured out a way to tell her it was just me the whole time.

Women walk around
Sleep deprived
And starving over the latest diet.
Holding their keys between their
Fingers as they clench their hand into a fist, because it's late and it gets dark so fast lately.
They've had hands grab their waist to move them out of the way.
Men who tuck her hair behind her ear and tell her she is "so beautiful, I don't even understand why you wear makeup."

Spending our time with
Grown men
Who use us as therapists,
And bank accounts.
Grown men
Who replace their mothers with us
And demand our time, love and energy anytime we accidentally make eye contact with them.
Holding onto the heel of our shoes as we climb, telling us to slow down.
Asking us to come back to where they stand because that's where they find we fit best.

Grown men who,
after all of that,
Ask us to smile more
And wonder why we don't want to **** them.

When I was 21 and had just given birth to my first baby,
I got a blank postcard in the mail and on the front was a picture of a woman in a dress, standing in a field of yellow.
The longer I stared at it the less it made sense,
She became less and less familiar.

4 years later I was holding my second baby,
And I got another postcard, nothing written on it this time either but on the front was the same woman.
This time she sat on a bench in the middle of a storm.
I felt a strange and intense need to tell her to get up and walk back home -
She seemed to be paralyzed by all the grey surrounding her and I thought if someone would just yell her name, she would remember who she was, how her body worked, she would wake up and realize it's time to leave.
But my throat would close up everytime I tried to say anything,
And I got too tired.
My body started to hurt,
My heart felt like it was buried too deeply inside me.
I glanced up from the card and saw some clouds in the distance,
I thought
"That's odd.."
But then looked at my sweet boy and
Told myself to forget about it,
You can concentrate on this feeling and be a real mother and those clouds will pass by,
You probably won't even notice them as they float over you.

But I forgot to finish building the house before the clouds came and before I knew it was were living, eating, sleeping right in the middle of the worst storm I had ever seen.
Nothing made sense anymore.
My family was inside the tornado,
Oblivious.
My loves were outside watching closely
And I was flying around
And around
And around
Dying for my feet to touch the ground.

I thought, maybe I can just get used to the spinning.
Do I maybe like the spinning?
I started to forget what he looked like,
And sometimes I'd pass by his hand he had reaching out for me, and not even realize it had been another year spent traveling around this world.

I loved them while I hated myself.
I loved them so much that I wanted to die for them.
I loved them so much that when he held me, or they sat in my lap, or someone said
"I love you mom"
This entire body would scream
And the pain I felt in every corner
Was enough to make me want to run away forever.

And I would leave,
And fly,
And spin around
Watching them grow
Hearing him say
"Please come back".

Now I'm here. 6 years later.
And my skin soaks up their light.
I use the word love openly and spent the time I needed to finish  building our home, so that whenever that tornado in the distance looks like it's getting closer,
I lock our doors and shut the curtains
And we lay with eachother telling stories, talking about our joy, and feeling the comfort of closeness. The freedom of vulnerability. The calmness of attachment.

I'll wear these bricks on my shoes until the day I leave,
So I'll never fly away again.

I'm building these wings so that next time you say my name and cause that shift of the ground beneath my almost stable feet, I can hover until you're done.

Maybe sometime I can fly away
And feel free.

Words are easy,
Feelings are hard.
Patterns are familiar,
Changing how you cope is just you lighting yourself on fire and then hoping you set the bucket of water close enough that you can reach it in time.

You never even saw the bucket,
But your therapist told you exists.
And they wouldn't lie,
Would they?

Being a child was burned to the ground the moment he sat me on his lap.
Being a teenager was searching for the next person to make me feel like he did.
Being a young adult was acting out the past in a new relationship with someone who had no idea what was coming.
Being a mother has been reliving trauma and healing.
Being a partner has been learning to let someone love me.
Being a human means I am still all of these people.