In another universe , different from ours.
The Polar bears walk among crystals and geodes,
The aurora borealis at their feet.
The sky goes white at night,
Lit by a copper moon.
By copper and coal colored stars.
The clouds at sunset are the colors of poems,
the rain is always cool,
and the air the temperature of warm kisses,
In another universe the polar bears walk among crystals and geodes,
In another universe everything is okay.

It's okay---Cry woman.
Let those tears well up hot in your eyes.
But Do not take that heat lightly,
that heat is the Lightning of a thousand storms past,
from an ocean our mothers and grandmothers swam in, laughed in and loved in.
It's the anger of every time we were told no because of our womb,
Or thrown out because we weren't good enough.
So your heartaches?
then let it, let it break open like the sky and let the tears fall and the heat come,
The great big sky can only hold so much and there is no shame in being the sky or the storm or the stars or even the darkness.
There is no shame in heartache or being,
Our tears are the tears of our mothers and our grandmothers and great grandmothers and so on.

They are sacred water.

Oceans and rivers before that and the primordial soup from which we crawled
and meteors and star dust .
No no no.
There is no shame in those tears , darling,
There is No shame in being the sky.

5/20/2016

I don't remember being well anymore,
I don't remember what a peaceful day feels like,
I don't remember when the physical pain wasn't here
If I hadn't already been crazy the pain would have driven me there...
Dropped me off, threw my stuff out, left like a bat out of hell and never looked back.
But I was already on my way when the pain started.
It just made the walk harder.


There is a lot i don't remember actually .
Childhood stuff I should.
It hurts my moms feelings, so I play along about 'that one time' and all my great memories.
She usually knows I'm lieing ,
She pretends not to notice
And I smile and nod, pretending to remember.

It is a Symptom of the diseases,
The forgetfulness, the blankness.
Part brain fog, slow synapse, brain changes from great stress and brain inflammation,
But also part Defense mechanism.
There are whole years gone...blocked out

I don't remember being well anymore,
I can't remember the name for simple words most of the time,
And I don't remember peace but I still pray for it.

I think if Madness were a person he'd be a handsome, sharp dressed, man. He would wear a well tailored suit with a deep purple, velvet, waistcoat. I imagine  he'd wear a black fedora for the mystery and a pocket watch to keep time. A little old fashioned but ageless.

A few days before he arrives I always get antsy. My anxiety acts up and I do things like leave the grocery store in a panic and empty handed. I take my kids to the park and then I find I suddenly can't breathe and the world feels like it's ending. And then....there is the inevitable knock on my minds door.

"Oh it's you" I'd say.
"Dont pretend like you didn't know I was in town..." He pushed past me , drops his stuff , and easily finds the whiskey cabinet and pours himself a full glass. He has been here before.  "I was at the grocery store yesterday and the park a few days before that. " he turns, glass in hand. He smiles and it sends chills down my spine. "Well..." He continues, "you should have known I was coming . The signs were all there." I turn away, nervously and indignantly.
He sips his whiskey, studying me.
"Right. You thought some vitamins and sunshine could keep me away."
The thought obviously amuses him. He laughs and downs his entire drink in one gulp. He loves this game. He pours another whiskey and walks over to me. He puts the drink in my left hand and stands right up against my back, his hands on my shoulders, his lips near my ears. I can feel his warm breathe and I am nauseated and comforted at the same time.  He slowly moves his hands down my arms to my hands. He locks his right hand with mine and wraps it around my stomach so his arm is around me too. His left hand brings the drink up to my lips. I close my eyes for a moment wishing him away. It doesn't work.
"Now" he whispers "where were we?"

The jellyfish.

700 million years and it seems everything has changed, but them.

They are the oldest multi-***** animal on the planet and if there were an animal up for God’s first friend I would say it’s definitely the jellyfish.

I'd like to think God needed friends, and I'd like to think she explored this world as it grew beyond her grasp and perhaps as she swam these oceans she found solace in the steadfastness of her old friend. Always there, always the same.

I can't help but feel some kinship myself. Somewhere among the primordial ooze a part of me, knew an ancient, small part of them. Then, later, sometime before my evolutionary ancestors ever went on land, we swam together. We shared the oceans of an earth that most of us wouldn't recognize now. Forward still, as time tends to move, my ancestors went on land and theirs stayed in the rolling seas. Watching the world change around them.

If there is a God, I'd like to think she still visits the jellyfish on occasion. That aquariums are her favorite place beside the ocean itself.

I looked at myself today.
I mean, I really looked, I saw.
I leaned on the bathroom counter and stared into my own reflection.
I took note of my dark, slightly greasy, hair.
It's  longer and thicker since I last paid attention.
My eyes are more grey than blue tonight.
Like dark water under a full moon.
My freckles are still uncountable.
I always forget how many I have.
I've been looking at them for over 26 years so I don't see them anymore.
Then there's the slightly puffy, red patches on either side of my nose.
Indicative of my sinus infection and dehydration.
And I find that no matter how many times I've seen my face,
No matter how many pictures of every angle.
I look so much like a stranger to myself.
And the longer I stare,
The less I recognize.
I want to know myself .
Find out what's past that dark water on full moon night.


****
I have this memory , I think it might be one of my earliest. so age 2-3 years old. I'm not sure, but I remember going into the bathroom,
Stepping up onto the stool and looking in the mirror And I was shocked at what I saw. I thought, "that's not what I'm supposed to look like." I was disappointed and confused. It was like I had never seen myself before. It's a strange memory, I don't know what it means , except that I've never recognized myself.
In movies people always know their clones immediately. I've always thought that was crazy. I am confident I'd never recognize someone that looked just like me.

I never thought the human heart was a beautiful thing until my youngest son did.
It has always seemed clumsy, relatively simple,and a somewhat gross *****.
Muscle-ligament-electricity
I have always been bewitched by the brain and its nerves.
it's mystery, complexity and resilience.
He loves blood the way I love nerves,
he begs me to re read the heart and blood pages in his children anatomy books.
He knew all kinds of facts about blood and the heart at 2.
He never drew the traditional valentine days hearts he draws, to the best of his ability, anatomically correct hearts.
He loves it's rhythm ,
he loves it's simplicity,
and he finds it above all else, beautiful.
he loves it for its tangible nature,
the way it is reliably one way and one way only.

No longer am I scared all the time,
My heart has stopped racing when I'm the only girl,
My hands don't begin to shake,
When some one looks like you,
You no longer have my mind,

I can finally love the good man without being tormented by the bad,
When he makes love to me
Your long, dark shadow is finally gone
And I am free.

It took so long to clean you out of my brain.
To clean out all the fear, the hurt, the pain
But I did it, slowly, Year by year.
I shined a light on my fear.

It's been almost 10 years Now,
And Every So often,
My nightmares ,
They hold you still.

And I may never find all the crevices you hide in,
All the love that you replaced,
I'll never be the same,
But you no longer have my mind,
And you no longer have my brain.

They say we have as many cells in our bodies as there are stars in existence.  
We are each a walking, talking universe.

When I look in the mirror I see the tears have stained my eyes a different shade of blue.
It's the blue of newborn stars all those light years away.
My cheeks, red, are the color of the old stars. The ancients at the end of their reign.
It is the infinite, the vast, the cosmos as the act of mourning. But sometimes the universe is in an atom, the big things are in the mundane and the sadness comes at the small things.
The shoes in the hall, the towels folded a certain way, a sons bumped head.
Sparking tears of star dust and causing our universes to tremble.

We do not only mourn a human being but the death of universe .

The sun continues it reign in the sky.
More out of habit and natural law than of any intention.
Despite it's apathy and indifference the old star still melts the night's ice, still warms the rocks and feeds the chloroplasts.
See, People get the love story wrong.
It isn't the moon and the sun, it never was. It has always been time, time and that ancient star. The moments that press on, burning, and infinite.
Carrying on the same in spite of us and our human efforts.
They were present at our birth and they will watch long after we have gone.
The sun will come around that mountain bend for the next foreseeable 5 billion years or so and time will be there to documents it's days.

I read books about war, tragic loss, love and heartbreak.  
I expose my heart to the hard stuff,
because I truly believe somebody needs to.  
If I can forgive humanity for these horrors then maybe I can forgive myself.
After putting down the book ,
my heart heavy,
I look for salvation in your body.
In our bodies together.
Trying to find solace in your kiss and your touch.
Me straddling you, both of us naked and warm, sweat starting to glisten on our skin.
your hands on my hips and mine on the sides of your head holding your gaze.
Somewhere in those deep brown puddles is my salvation, the compassion that would keep me here, that would allow me to find the forgiveness for the world.
You smile at me sweetly before breaking free from my hold and kissing me deeply.
We tumble down the hole,
I imagine it like Alice.
Down , down , down.
time has stopped and it is all blackness
but our bodies.
only landing upon ******.

My sadness still shows ,
you lightly trace circles on my back and you listen as I spill out my broken heart.
You kiss my forehead and you tell me you love me.

I believe you.