You are not your father’s keeper
You are not your mother’s mother
You are a huntress
A wolf goddess

The sum of your trials
Feral
But glowing with that holy light

Your crown shall be tarnished
And made of gold and bones

You will wear it even as the weight of it may bear you down
As drops of blood may trickledown your temple
You will wear that blood as war paint

Crouched and snarling
-or-
Standing straight backed and watchful in the wind

Fingers curled with dried blood
-or-
Hands bare and moonlight pale open to the world around you

For every way you are
Remember wolf girl
Your strength has been forged in fire
Don’t apologize for using it

Stand at the edge of your sanity
Howl in the night
Know
Despite any hardships ahead
You have found a home

I can’t see past that moment sometimes

Walking through the front door
Unbelief and utter knowing mixed together like shaken oil and water
Together in one space but completely separate

I wanted to fight the world
Anger a balm on a bleeding heart

Tears a weakness I could not abide
Iron in my blood
Chin held high with chipped teeth gritting past
Smiling for the world
Don’t let them see
Don’t let them touch you

Time went on
I learned to breathe again
It all goes back to a new normal

Now enter stage right:

Death again
A classic creeping figure this time
Not a jump scare
Steal my brother in the night scene

But every performance he now makes is tainted with your memory

And when I cry, finally, at this curtain call it will be you and our childhood that will flash behind my eyes

Something’s shifting but I’m more solid then I’ve felt before

My footsteps have a weight to them
Not a heaviness
But a presence

I’m not whirling on the tips of my toes stealing moments
I’m dancing full footed in the present
I’m landing all my movements and letting you be by my side

Matched
No heavy burden pulling me under
Just a level of laughter
A dash of the ridiculous
And all the explosions of every time you look my way

It’s not that the world dulls around you
But that you seem like the most vibrant thing in the room
And I’ve become very fond of your colors

Red light through stacked glass shines
Pulses with the thick 77 beat
Scarred wood soft under fingernails
I smile at you but can’t tell who’s happiness is radiating around me
Mine - yours - ours
Does it matter when in that moment I feel endless
Infinite
The answer to the question you should have been asking all along:
Rock and roll and someone to sing along with

Words caught in my throat like glass
I want to tell you all about me
I want to explode with my story
Dance on the words that glow
Coax the sentences that hurt slow but with chin raised high
I want to breathe past the fiber glass worry in my chest

What do you read in my eyes when I’m positively bursting to speak but mute with the honey stuck worry that you’ll take one real look and run away

My palms are open
A map
Pale and lined and filled with my stories
If you could see my world on them like I do I think you would find it beautiful and sparkling and terrifying and dark

I’ve lived a lot
And not in so many years
I like to pretend that the scars I’ve gotten from the wrong people are gone
But this scraping on my nerves when I try and let you in speaks to the lie of that

It scares me to want something
-someone-
I think I need to open my palms and show you the path through it

Try and believe that you won’t close them tight,
place them back in my lap,
far away from you,
and tell me you never wanted to see how to get through to me in the first place

Swimming in the syrup calm of now

When life flipped I found myself gulping down the sweetnesses around me

Now I’m left sprawled naked and sugar hyper on the floor of my mind
Staring at the dark above
Wondering how I missed that the glow I had been basking in had been mine all along

A slow fire flickering back in my heart

I’ll warm the crystal sweetness and have my amber lake again

Next time I’ll remember the trick

Life tilts

Don’t panic and drown in it

Confetti on my tongue when I try to speak
My laughter rings out instead
My eyes feel huge

Like they see the first glimpse of “Tomorrow” everyday now

Like “Tomorrow” finally realized it was today and liked it