across my face.

I saw spring coming
in the meadow
where the wildflowers
whisper to the wind.

found freedom on a snowcapped mountain top,

smiled to the child offering violets
cradled in her tiny hands

and when she smiles to me

her joy ripples like sunlight
across the sea of love.

the curtain is lifted.

the soul becomes visible

(always in the wild places
in my heart.)

She was drawing,
not for anyone.
Not even for herself.

Just…
  because her hands needed to move.
The pencil didn’t ask for approval.
It didn’t perform.
It just followed
 whatever was humming
  beneath her skin.

I’ve seen someone dance
 in the middle of cleaning.
Not to music.
Just to rhythm.

A private conversation
 between body and gravity
     where
      I was only
       accidentally
             invited.

There’s a holiness
 in the movements people make
  when they don’t know they’re being seen.

Not holy because they’re beautiful.
But because they’re untranslated.

They’re not trying to mean something.
They just are.

I’ve started collecting these moments.
Not in pictures.
Not in notes.
Just
  in the place behind my ribs
  where wonder stays
  when it’s too quiet to name.

always the child
who never got appreciated
just an unwanted child
trying her hardest
to be the perfect one—
just once.
trying her hardest
to be appreciated,
dying to hear:
“you did a great job,”
“the dish you cooked was very nice,”
“i’m proud of you,”
“you scored 98% in maths,”
“i’m proud of my daughter.”
she just wanted
to be loved.
to be seen.
to be appreciated.

Long after the music ends,
 the body remembers.

Not the melody
 but the weight of it.
Where the shoulders softened.
Where the fingers held a pause.
Where breath curled around a silence
  and didn’t let go.

The body doesn’t archive like the mind.
It doesn’t recall in sequence.
It remembers in tension.
In residue.
In the way your spine knows
  when something is about to fall.
In the twitch that follows
  a note that’s already gone.

Sometimes, I move like something
  I once heard.
Not consciously.
Just
  a rhythm finds my step
      years later
      and walks me home.

There are gestures
  I no longer know the names for
 but my body still offers them
  like a language it trusts
      more than thought.

Maybe this is how memory stays kind:
  not by being exact,
  but by letting itself
    be danced.

I don't
feel anything
at all,
but I feel
it all
at once.
The brokenness,
the misery,
the weariness,
and the shame
are like
being
drenched in silt,
caked in filth,
covered with
life's crud.
I reek
of the living river—
its currents
have carried me
into a sea
of everything.
Now,
I find myself
adrift
in an ocean
of everything
and nothing.