Go find people who will talk to you on a bridge, who will meet you in vulnerability. Who will not leave you in silence under a street lamp. Go surround yourself with those who will ask “what ails you?”
You deserve to find respect in the way someone considers you. Find those who are sure of you, who can see you are a charm not a thorn. Folks who make you feel like you belong; folks that choose you. Do not spend your life crying over those who could not hold you. Forgive them and forgive yourself for asking the naked for a coat. It may be that you were naked, too. Hold nothing against anyone just be on your merry way, see where other roses grow and what spring looks like when winter releases its grip over your heart. You cannot stay in the past, no matter how sweet or how troubling it seems. You are here on this “x”. Take heart and go find people who like you –wish kindness, love and joy for all those around them. Go, go bravely, go quietly into life.

me gustaría sentarme y decirte
que yo siempre te quise
y que si no te conocí bien me disculpes
no es fácil saber como moverse
en sincronía a alguien mas aunque haiga amor
hay que saber cuando tomar un paso hacia adelante y un paso hacia atrás –hay que saber bailar

We should see each and think brother, sister– earthly kin.

Love our kin so deeply that when they survive
the unkind acts that do unfold
in life we sit with them and cry

May we love our kin so deeply we become even more courageous and emboldened
to stand in the door way if they wish to seek revenge

Walk them through their pain
to understand their hate and sorrow because the wick of  hatred will burn them distort & corrode them burying
the thread between the world and them melting away
their peace–their heaven on earth surrendered
if they walk through that door

Spent so much time alone
Suckled by the edges of leaves and awaken by mountain slopes that the first person I see makes me smile just like the first flakes of snow

When I stir the ***, I am happy with the scent of every ingredient that I have poured into my life, of every version of that stew that slow cooked until now.  

I am not saddened, ashamed or ******* my hand that poured in salt.

I begin to feast.

I see the oatmeal boil in hot water.
That is my mind I think to myself, and that’s all human lives lifting as they are born and sinking once they died

You swirl in a sweeping of leaves up to the heavens, and I stand again at your grave
your songs spin and join the dried foliage, I hear you sing my name and the flowers you gave me, now dry, spin in air too and so does my grandfather’s songs at your window, my uncle’s guitar before he passed, the tuning  of my cousin’s bass and the strumming of my brother guitar melt into the canvas of today’s fall skies. And just when I feel so close to surrendering, I feel all these dried parts of myself begin to lift.