Today is filled with headaches and their residuals,
with tears I wish I knew how to cry.
I keep ripping up fresh healed wounds
so at least I can feel something.
Have all of me,
because I know I’m not here to stay -
can stitch it up and refill later.
I’m full with emotions that I know all too well.
I feel too big to hide within myself.
I feel you sticking in my lungs (I can’t breathe).
My body turning against me
Demanding to be heard.
Soon there will be a ringing in my head,
knives at the womb -
twisting, ripping free,
cause my heart can’t help but hold on.
Will she rage at me again?
     I’m sorry.
I’m always sorry -
     for you, for being too much, for taking
     it to heart, for loving, for-giving.
Never for myself.
I do not deny that
I know my body language
and I know when I’m not listening.
I know my demons by design
and I know when they are starving.
My own hands feed them,
invite them to the table.
Too busy distracting myself from the things I know are good for me.
That love I want is far.
That love I need staring back at me.
Her hands, reaching out,
she feels the cold
and is pushing through,
reaching into abysmal distance
for something to take hold.
To pull me back home.
Voices I wish I didn’t want to hear
are singing and enchanting me.
I’m left to face this age old Demoness,
withstanding the trials of time.
Tell me what you feed upon
and I’ll serve you on a silver platter.
Nourish you so I’m not eating away at myself.
I’m afraid of any more withering.

I sit here under a clouded sky,
the winds carry these prayers far and wide.
My Angels burn within this Holy Fire,
and I am everything but alone.
The embers, the glow.
For the first time I am warm when the air is cold.
Time may just have stopped,
and in this moment it may just be me and this fire,
me and all I’ve ever truly needed -
the sense of Spirit running,
pulsing through me.
The mountains, my mothers,
the stars, my hidden fathers.
I want to be no where but here.
The smoke encircling me,
making me clean again.
Pure.
I hear the voices of my loved ones,
I see my grandmother looking down over me,
smiling at her little girl,
grown into woman,
into someone beautiful.
I hope my father is proud,
and my mother at peace.
I pray for those who are hurting to find something that to them,
feels like this fire does to me.
Something that can heal and nurture even the most wounded parts of their being
and make them feel safe inside their body,
made of both flesh and Spirit.
I smell the sweet cherry tobacco,
the burning Pine and sage.
I am home here.
I am home because I am in prayer,
in understanding with Creation,
again connected to the Holy Spirit
that breathed life into me.
There is contentment in this moment,
where I can find deep gratitude in all my pains of the past,
and where fear has no place inside of me,
or anything surrounding.
The fire speaks to me loudly and it’s mantra is
“It’s okay.
It’s okay, child of the Universe,
I will hold you when you are suffering,
when you are at a loss,
when you do not understand.
And even if you walk away for a long time,
I will burn the same when you return.
I will remember your name,
for it holds my essence,
    you hold my essence,
in your Spirit, in your scars.
I will remember your hands,
for I have marked you with beauty and strength.
Tend to to me,
and you will come so gracefully back to yourself.
You will learn to be soft, precise, fierce.
You will learn to nurture,
to bring warmth and light to everyone in your presence.
You will learn how to turn from ember to flame,
how to turn so graciously to dust and ash.
How to become something from nothing,
and how you need Air and Earth to survive,
and water to keep you calm.”
This path is golden,
but not without pain -
tis why we pray.
This path is the greatest love I have ever known,
tis why we pray.
And in that is everything.
That we never need a reason,
yet everything is a reason.
I can send my voice up as tears of both grief and gratitude flow out of me.
Could there be anything more beautiful?
More true?
I know undying trust
and pain just as absolute.
I know the pain, the shattering pain,
is what made me search, have faith, believe, understand.
Dedicate myself to something profound.
I know love is the true essence,
why these hands only want to give and hold.
Why I will stay up all night by this fire alone as the moon makes her way through the night sky.
And I won’t question a thing.
Not where, not why or how.
Tonight I will relieve myself of the constant tilling and uprooting of every piece of my life and suffering.
I will leave space for the Divine to make itself a home inside of me,
and remind me how absolutely precious I am,
Life is.
I will let my body be the altar tonight,
and not dare doubt
how life could ever be this beautiful.

It froze me cold in the thick of night,
The demons taking hold.
Feeling myself falling into this hole.
I can no longer taste the mornings of waking before sunrise
and praying that I please be better today than the day before.
More pain is encircling me now,
I’m chasing my own tail trying to get back to myself.
The walls are caving in and my breath is shortening.
Why don’t you remember what it means to stand in your truth?
I’m calling out to you.
My heart is breaking for the broken,
And I’m fragile still from the shattering of death.
I can not hold the broken glass.
The shards are ripping me at the seams.
I’m bleeding, can’t you see?
Can’t you see how this is tearing into me?
I smell that demon on your breath,
Clouding up your head,
And the exhales are slowly suffocating me.
I thought I could handle them,
But they seem to be slipping into my bloodstream.
The fears of you alone
Carving knives into your soul,
I swear it shakes me to the bone.
So I toss aside myself,
Thinking I can just pick her up later.
But as your cup runs empty,
So does mine,
And I have to pull the energy to nurture from dangerously deep inside,
From my own place that I hide.
Where no one is supposed to go.
You haven’t seen the tears.
You haven’t heard the weeping.
But I promise you they’re there,
Ravaging and reaping.
This was never supposed to hurt.

My grief is a sickness towards everything around me. My grief is paralyzing resistance. My grief is the midwife to my anger. My grief is walking in a cloud of darkness. My grief is dressed in black. My grief is a slow poison leaking, it is a stone in my heart. My grief is tears buried so **** deep. My grief sounds like muffled screaming. My grief wants to scream. My grief wants love, to laugh, to be seen. My grief wants nothing but to exist without judgement. My grief is just trying to make its way out of me. My grief doesn’t want to be the enemy, it doesn’t want to make me cold. My grief wants to speak and tell you I’m sorry for how your grief was to you. My grief is lack of compassion because I’m hurting and feel like I must be silent. My grief is ancient. Universal. My grief plays out in dreams that co-star my guilt. My grief knows me inside and out. It has a place in every cell. My grief is held, cradled in the safe, warm arms of its mother. My grief has outgrown what I can hold. My grief lives within the soul of the universe, so I know you feel it too. My grief is the deep breaths. My grief is the fruit from a seed of love. My grief has roots. My grief is so sacred. My grief is you. It’s her. My grandmother. My grief is her last words. My grief is that I don’t feel I am living up to them. My grief misses your voice. And mine. My grief is for me, too. My grief is still grieving. My grief is knowing that it won’t ever stop.

“Let me hold precious the memory of those who have crossed over by letting them be a part of me.” May I be granted with opportunities in my daily life to honor them through kind and loving actions towards others. When my heart is darkened by the strokes of pain, may laughter emerge from a deep fallow within me and allow for a moment of joy.

“Dissolve the haze of fury, and help me be patient as the puzzle comes together over time.” When I question, “Why?” remind me of my faith in Creation. Bring to light my roll in this becoming, and help me forgive myself for my actions that have contributed to my suffering. Grant me the space to be with my anger and move through its outbursts to its source. Implant within me the tools to feed its call for action with love.

“Mellow my hearts rhythms when it engages in a race with my thoughts.” Help me to stay present to my emotions so I can give them the acknowledgement they deserve. When the tears flow and my chest aches, allow the winds of my ancestors to create space within my heart for healing. Break down my walls so their love can permeate through my being.

“Inject me with a reminder that I didn’t come this far to abandon myself now.” Help me remember these prayers. Give them an open pathway to soak into my subconscious and become my way of living. May I swallow them and let them become my blood, my cells, my being - my foundation for higher consciousness.

May my grieving become a light in the abyss of the unknown.

Little hands are reaching out,
Broken hearts screaming silent cries.
Moving through the veil of life,
through the eminence of this death we shall rise.
In the presence of the magnitude of her love,
this pain is but a pinprick,
a thorn upon the roses stem.
It shall bloom forever,
for the soul knows no end.
The planets shift and move,
reminding me I can do the same.
Our destinies may be carved in stone,
but the author is none other than the hand that is our own.
She’s spilled her blood and exposed her scars,
handles ****** with an elegant grace.
No anger in the bones that will rest,
her peace un-jeopardized by an unexpected fate.
I breathe the moments bedside deep -
extract her nectars,
her love, her faith.
Silently I bow my head,
and promise to honor all that is her name.

7/28/18

To feel them,
those tiny arms, so fragile.
Held you like a babe,
like you held me.
And every reason I chose you
existed within that moment.
Standing only to hold you up,
mothering the broken.
I will hold you in my heart
the way she held you in her womb.
I will carry you that way.
To do so is my purpose -
there by both choice and design.
I am the hands that hold the chain,
anchor suspensed.
There is lead in my heart, too.
I will measure our love by this moment.
For you, to cry and let me
hold you
holds the only weight.
This is all it ever was,
and all it ever will be.