I soften into life
while I sit over a large cushion
reaching my left hand deep into my chest
pulling  out the heavy ball of yarn that has been sitting there
I gaze upon on it, at first I want to recoil in sorrow, but I keep holding it and decide I must start to knit
knit it into something like sweater that can be of use when the next winter comes
that can be gifted to someone else
that can expand into kindness

that is what I want to do with this
that is what I want to do with my life

It is pure magic that lies ahead
scent of lessons hard won and learned
lead me to the edge near the resting bodhi tree
near the cliffside the wide sky
calls me
and I close my eyes
–all my courage shapes into wings
and I flap rousing the dust below
wings wider than ever before

Liszt and the leaves sooth me
and I sway over the pavement looking up at their foliage

if there is an answer it is there
in their rustling, in their meeting of the wind and in the simplicity of the mystery

They, do they realize I have had the same friends for 20 years now
And that inevitably we have stumbled through youth together
oscillating like sonic waves
closer, further,
sawtooth
we have been human
humanness so imperfect that we hurt one another with our carelessness
but they always stay there in discomfort with me
on park bench
in grocery parking lots
in side streets alley and took responsibility
their action
and allowed me the chance to speak the them and atone to mine

they might think it was impatience, immaturity, abandonment but
it was love this great big leap of love for myself that I took
this courageous willingness to state what friendship meant to me
and when it fell upon deaf ear

I could see him standing again in the alley “ saying we have nothing to be sorry” or something fuzzy that resembled nothing to say sorry about.

Did he not understand I had sold all my belonging, moved across the world to stand there, did he not see my naivety, my willingness and my faith in him, my wild belief that I could break any norm,

Did I not see this heavy wistfulness, my lack of love that I would bet my life on crumbs, on song that promised love, did I not see that two others a woman and girl might deserved to wake up to who they loved, did I not see all the ****** up swirling dysfunction in my head,


The last time I came to see him,
I smiled because he is so good at what he does. He radiates.

–And I thought of the troublesome times I have come to see my dearest friends through my short life
and how they and I
–we stood there in discomfort but finally patched it up,
took the muck and held it. Tried
got angry, cried, asked for forgiveness, or stood silently until we could agree to meet again, until slowly we could atone
The gift of friendship that we always offered after mistake and mistake–


But he left ...
and I kept dancing at least there was music playing

At least my intention was to liberate
, to come and to see someone
look at them as something more that a fiction of imagination, see them with flesh and blood and not keep them clouded villainous or a story too skewed in my mind  

and if my intention got stuck under sheets of thoughts and misunderstanding over lack of phrasing, over more of youthful stumbling it is because it comes with the territory of being this young, this tender, this foolish, this whole bag of everything that is me
and i am not ashamed of every mistake I have made
slowly I am learning
appreciating friendships
the renewed bonds
The 5 years, the ten years, the 15 years, the 20 year long connections I have worked with all my might to feed with devotion
passed all my insecurities, past all my self doubt, past my own pride, past my self to see them standing then just as they are

I see the longing in their eyes and heaviness
and I want to tell them you have still got life to live
and the body it goes
and I do not know that plot of land you inhabit but I know life is always here
that with tenderness we can hold all our lives’ sorrows and see the gleaming bread of beauty that remains
for that which we have been
is the wool in that yarn string

I see clearly
who I am in the mirror
where I excel and what I lack
I writhed and I cried
and burned
and ran like a wolf alone in the forest
awoke next to a lake
fur still damp
but to the water I turned my gaze
and I could finally recognize who I was

humbled by the moon and its giving light
I stood there shivering and out of my mouth spilled the courage to howl

and the wind accepted my offering and carried it off

This is where I start
I see my humaneness,
my everythingness, my interbeing
and so I your blurry figure comes into focus
and you are just another human

the kind who stand in front mirrors
writhe, cry, burn,are reborn and
run like a wolf
until you howl out too
to the greater in humbleness





I am back to my being
and you can call me by my real name
the one we share

And there
and here
I transform
what you give me
all the splinters
****** to open
a small surface protruding
into my life
but with intention
find it laying over a flower
Over the smile of a stranger