Swinging in a blanket swing,
the sun hitting most of my body,
cold wind hitting my arms and face—
autumn’s coming slow and steady.

I close my eyes,
the sun hits my face,
leaves rustling, kids playing,
I fall asleep—
listening to the sounds of divinity.

make-up here
makeup there
following the trends
next week it'll end
shopping to spend
daddy's money to rent
a fake smile
a clear skin
no underchin
jewelry and rings

so boys will see
straight from afar

what a dream you are…

fake

I hear "goodbye"

while you say

"stay another mile"

but girlie
don't you see
you're running a marathon

with high heels sweetie

Here we are
              just him and I
               beneath a tell-tale sky of high.  
I
             hanging on  
       like a rose on a trellis,
                       in a garden of love !
He
                like a garden lattice
                             sure and steady.
Worship dreams of valor
                everything else is
                         just a paler shade of
               blue...
Here we are
              the open sky and I
          and the One who seeded me
  like a rose in a garden,  
                 of pure perfection!

I am more than a dress,
a blues song you clothe me in
so your darkness won’t feel
as heavy as your tongue.

Where there’s bone there’s wings.
I can fly a sky of notes you can’t write
because freedom is a place in me
you can’t find.

Will and weather, cloud and feather,
what you think you hold isn’t even in your hands.
This black and blue bird is a sister of crows.
When the spirit says go, a ****** will grow.

I wonder if my legacy
will merely be a faint light
in the peripheral vision
of a passer’s eye or a shadow figure
of a memory, the name on the tip
of a tongue one can’t seem to form.

No matter how many letters I write
to my ten-year-old self she doesn’t
seem to trust she will ever be first in line
because she’s been taught, she’s
supposed to be last.

I am beginning to understand
why I’ve always been in love with dandelions.
They are petaled, defiant sunlight
thriving where nothing else can.

…and even with a whisper,
revive my depths,
turn me like a veil,
face down
in the
grass
falling asleep,
with
the
feet in the sky to be born -- maybe,
maybe
something will stick to my soles,
growing arms from the rain,
flying among the clouds

but what are the depths?
other than the
unheard
pulse,
the
untouched
breath,
palms-braided-in-roots,
­the flower withered
because of a kiss,
the
leaves
blown by the wind,
dew fallen on
crosses,

but what are the depths?
than frankincense, - the place where
rivers never dry,
the place where  rivers run away from us towards
forghetfulness
of oblivion…

towards
forghetfulness
of oblivion…
stir up my depths,
…and even with a whisper,
stir up my depths,
turn my
face down to earth,
hopefully
i can lose my steps in the sky-- maybe,
maybe
            something will stick to my soles,

in the sky maybe,
                                   maybe
something will stick to my soles

Here in the dry constellations,
Orion winters in the blue west, the
Drinking Gourd spills silver on the void, and
the Seven Sisters crowd together,
quilting the covers of night.
I miss the beach.

I miss the salt, I miss the sweet
curled wave that rolled the wind
into a gesturing wand
of air and water,
joining two lurching souls
ungainly in their solitary progress,
into one smooth moving thing
hip to hip, stride for stride
handfast, untarnished

because you chose to throw
your arm around my neck
and let us spin

in the eddy, as the tide
ran out, till we were dizzy

and all the slipping stars
cleared the boards and moved
their heavy banquet
to our eyes.

©joyannjones December 2016

I felt disappointed. Not a fleeting, passing disappointment… but the kind that sinks into your bones, that gnaws at your chest, that whispers in every quiet moment that you have failed.

And the worst part? The unbearable part? It’s knowing that whatever I do… whatever I give… whatever I fight, bleed, and sacrifice… it will never be enough for you.

I have tried. Oh, how I have tried. Every day, every moment, I offered pieces of myself that I barely recognized, hoping they would finally be seen, finally be enough.

But they are not. They never are. And slowly, painfully, I began to see it clearly: you do not see me at all. You only see the gap between who I am and what you demand.

I have bent, I have broken, I have reshaped myself in ways I thought were impossible. I have hidden my pain, swallowed my tears, carried burdens you could not even name.

And yet… still, I fall short. Still, the silence, the coldness, the judgment hangs over me like a storm I can never outrun.

Do you even know the weight I carry? The effort, the sacrifice, the love I poured into a vessel that rejects me anyway? Or is it invisible to you, like I am invisible to you?

I lie awake at night, replaying my every word, my every gesture, the endless attempts to satisfy a standard that moves like shifting shadows, always out of reach.

I am exhausted. Not just physically, but in every fiber of my being. I am exhausted from hoping. From trying. From believing that someday… maybe someday… I would be enough.

And the cruelest truth sinks in: I will never be enough for you. Not in this world, not in your eyes, not in your heart.

I gave everything—my heart, my soul, my very self. But everything is still too little. And I begin to wonder if it was ever about me, or if it was always about your expectations, your rules, your impossibilities.

I am tired of striving for a perfection that will never exist, of reaching for approval that will never come, of loving someone who measures me by what I lack rather than what I am.

And yet, in the ruins of this realization, a strange clarity emerges. Perhaps it is not a defeat. Perhaps it is the beginning of freedom.

If I am never enough for you… then I no longer need to chase your approval. I no longer need to bend, to hide, to shrink myself to fit the space you deem acceptable.

I can be everything for me. I can give myself the care, the respect, the love that I have been starving for all this time.

And in that, I find a flicker of power. A spark of defiance. A quiet, burning certainty that my worth does not depend on your validation.

I am enough. Perhaps not for you. Perhaps not for anyone who cannot see beyond their ego and their demands. But enough for me. And that must be enough.

So I stand, exhausted but unbroken, shattered but alive, rejected yet fiercely, irrevocably whole.

And one day, I hope, someone will see me—not the gaps, not the flaws, not the shadows—but the whole, blazing, complicated being I am, and they will know the truth: I was always enough.