Feel the tension,
Even though it’s uncomfortable,
because it’s where you’ll grow!
Lean into the discomfort,
Feel the disconnect, as
That’s where new life begins!

☕︎‎

I want to be the light leaking through your kitchen window.

The fresh juice.
Warm muffins.
Birds singing.
Coffee brewing.

                                                    But,
                                                I am not.


I’m the leaky faucet you still haven’t got around to fixing.

The orange peels.
Burnt toast.
Cracked eggs.
Broken mug.

                                        Breakfast ruined.

𓇋

Middle school, age thirteen:
that strange doubled feeling

when walking cinderblocked halls
painted calm institutional blue -

there I am, heart in hand,
clopping in too-big shoes

to the strobing gym to see the girls
in their new bright dresses,

our bodies and faces branching
into adulthood relentlessly;

to see friends wearing cheap new suits
& talking endlessly of Kelly and Molly,

of Sarah and cheerleader Brittany,
of the Other Kelly, Erica, and Erin

(some having thoughts of Bryan
& Kenny, Mike, and Other Mike)

Yet there is another of me
listening to checkered floor,

how the linoleum squares echo
as I stalk through emptied halls,

(how disturbing, when a known thing
is so reconfigured and unfamiliar...)

I reach the chaperone stand,
deliver my ticket from a hot palm,

step into the loud and wild parade
as the dimmed dance floor writhes

with pubescent shadows,
my shoes clacking and shining,

looking for Kelly and Other Kelly,
drifting to safer bleacher corners:

unaware that thirty years later
this night is still engraved

on the back of a breaking brain:
the year the harvest failed.

She arrived into my world, with colors like the bloom of spring,
A promise of snugness, the delight she could bring,
I watched her flourish, so vibrant and bright,
Yet I lingered in doubt, too sightless to clasp flight.

Her presence like summer, so vital and full of  delight,
But autumn crept in, stealing days from my sight,
I hesitated long and the colors slowly turned gray,
And then winter came, found me with nothing to say.

I now feel the nip of the love I let go,
Regret like the frost, biting deep in the snow,
She was a whole universe, still I took excessive time,
A season now gone, a mountain to climb.

Left shattered by a voyage so fleeting,
with echoes of could-have-beens and might-have-beens,
a life yet to be lived,
etched indelibly upon the canvas of my mind.

A plethora of unanswered riddles linger,
questioning my place in your heart,
while I convince myself that it's but water under the bridge.

Yet in my dreams, you reappear,
as if time’s fabric has unraveled,
and in another existence, we are eternally entwined.

To you, I was a sealed tome, a fact I now lament,
for I remained ensconced in my cocoon,
paralyzed by an untamable dread,
failing to unfurl my love’s true essence.

Gradually, I endeavored on this journey,
only to find myself adrift,
but was I ever truly yours?
Slowly, the vessel of our connection foundered.

As days pass, so too does hope wane,
of salvaging a course gone astray,
and you remain blind to my plea for rescue, deaf to my silent cries,
for your pride is your deity, or perhaps, so entwined with love's illusion.