“When me and grief kiss
we use tongue”
Exchange each others DNA
And become made of one another
Become the threads that hold us together-
Change how we carry and express ourselves.
We are infatuated by the experience of getting to know
the shape of every curve and crevice
Before we dance our way into the center.
When me and grief kiss
we take it slow.
Conscious caressing of the spaces that have been silenced
Tender touching of the pain bodies
To reawaken sensations of love coursing through us-
No wiping the tears when we’re crying.
When me and grief kiss
we lick the tears streaming down our skin
Taste the salt of our wounds-
I let grief in.
Fully consumed
Swallow it whole so it can navigate my insides
And get digested
Break down to
Become the cells that nourish my love and passions.
When me and grief kiss
We get passionate
Like longing for the lover that breaks you open
And finally finding them in death’s darkest moments-
We spark fire,
Ignite ourselves into a version higher.
Burn the walls down that gatekeep our desires
And build a new empire.
When me and grief kiss
We hold each other close.
Press ourselves together-
I feel grief through layers and down into my bones.
No space between us,
The gaps are all closed.
Before me and grief kissed,
It courted me with hope.
Left me roses
Held my hand
Wrote me love notes.
When our lips finally touched,
I fell in love.
And now,
When me and grief kiss
We use tongue.

Soft heart like her,
A bleeding heart,
fingertips stained red with sweetness,
with Woman,
with Eternity.
Root. Seed. Fruit.
Her hands extending to mine.
Through ethers and
In dreams.
In dreams
I’m chasing
her light,
her love.
Protector of the heart,
Stewardess of the dream world,
Please slow my pace
and drive me deeper.
Help me to cry
and be softer.
Slow the rate the pain permeates me.
My heart is tired of
tender swelling.
Wants to be held in the holiness
Of being alive.
Let me take the pain in pieces.
Give me space to digest my place in it all.
Let me dream with her magic again,
rather than of the sickness.
Let me hold her,
Be held by her.
Drive her deeper.
Let it all penetrate me,
but slowly please.
Imprint it,
Brand it into my bones,
make me made from it -
the love, the strength, the beauty.
I want to be built of soft systems.
I wait, I beg, I work for the day we no longer have to be so resilient.
Let me taste, small
the sweetness.
Inhale her existence.
Exchange each other -
I will give her praise and vow to listen.
To find the silent spaces
she Exists.
Where I can bow to her presence
and no longer her memory.

She said
“What if before we decided to take the next journey in human form,
Before we said “yes, I’m ready” to touching our feet back down firmly in the soil,
Carrying bits of star dust and cosmos in our hearts,
We sat with Creation - we sat with God - and God laid out our life on a golden scroll, gleaming with the story of our soul - and asked for our yes?
What if we said yes to all of this?”
Said yes to being the one to answer the prayers to be loved with the depth of the oceans by a strong woman.
Said yes to be the holiest mirror of our human brilliance,
Said yes to penetrate the heart down into the DNA and rearrange it to the sound of a sacred hymn,
Said yes to burrow deeply into the soul - making a home with a fire forever burning that not just warms the spaces cold and dark,
But illuminates them with a constant prayer of everything pure, beautiful and true.
Said yes to being a hand that meticulously crafts a road map
back to the innocence of a soul unscathed by the pain we collect through the years, back to place inside we can dwell that is serene.
I think I said yes
To tearing hearts open wide and making space for crystal rivers to clean,
And mountains to emerge that you stand tall upon and love yourself like the first golden light of dawn.
I said yes
To breaking down the walls built with shaking hands
to keep out what hurts
Said yes to lending mine to rebuild the walls of stone and mortar and the first song ever sung,
So that when the world comes crashing down into a billion shattered pieces
Like a star exploding in the furthers chasms of ether,
You can be **** sure you will cast your sunlight down upon all that is broken
And be a pillar of un-shakeable strength
For all to look upon in awe
Of the magnificence you carry deep and pulsing
Within your blood and bones.

I do not feel the Earth beneath me,
do not feel my feet touching down
being pulled in
to something deeper.
I do not feel the cold Appalachian air in my lungs
I do not yet know
the name of its life force.
I did not see the leaves turn from green to honey’d shades of gold and ember.
I did not watch the leaves fall or witness the sky give itself unto elder-hood
And take on its winter shades of ice and gray.
There are yellowed ginkgos
And maple leaves like crowns strewn across the street here
I feel stuck in this loop of left turns back to his house.
Odin pulls me out and in,
Calling me when I have lost my way
He eats the fallen leaves
And I wonder if he knows something I don’t
about the importance of ingesting something so close to death
Something that will never be quite the same again
(I’m sure he knows)
I do not feel the Earth beneath me,
But I look at the trees,
Barren and cracking
And I understand.
Without rest there is pain.
Your own body will turn against you
Put you in agony
Just so you will please. slow. down.
It will reconstruct all the peaks and valleys you’ve made in your mind
And the pulsing of a newness within
Will push you to what you think is your limit
Make you believe you can’t bare another second of the crippling pain
Even when you know that is the only way out
Must give into the pressure growing in your head,
The thuds,
the pounding,
A new way is being constructed
(I cannot look into the light because I am supposed to be walking into the darkness.)
Your body will expose all you’ve held in to the outside world
Until the only thing left for you to surrender is blood and bile-
nothing is yours anymore.
You belong to the current of the seasons now
and if everything here is giving away and dying
you must too.

“This is not the same body as it used to be.”
I breathe.
It shouldn’t be.
This is the body I prayed would get injured. The same body who laid anesthetic as they graphed the burns. The same body whose skin regenerated itself day after painful day. This is the same body that sat 4 days and 4 nights and saw the sky bleed into her; red cardinals like stars shining against the pink morning. This is the body that kept going through days of food withheld, that processed and digested the binging. This is the body that has carried hundreds of stones into the lodge’s womb. This is the same body that breathed into the sun rising over the Ganga river. That has sat up countless nights praying and singing to the holy fire. This is the body that was told if only there was no sign of womanhood across my belly, I could twist a little deeper - maybe ring out the demons who have feasted there for years. This is that body. The body who has spent countless hours in the face of God, pulling carrots out of the soil. This body has been baptized by oceans and rivers coast to coast because she said “if you want to get to know a place, get into its waters.” This is the body that dreamt of you in a cathedral reading holy scripture & woke to a red river parting my legs. This is the body who then let you go, my Sun, and buried you in earth and in heart. This body should not feel like yesterdays body, or two years ago’s body. When a dear friend was teaching me to weave a basket they said, “a basket is just a memory of pressure.”
So what is this body a memory of?
It is a memory of all the times I’ve made love.
It is a memory of all the meals cooked together
and fires knelt by.
It is a memory of every grain of dirt collected under my fingernails,
Every bead of sweat.
It is the memory of weeping on your floor as I smelled the shirts in your closet the day that you died.
It is every sun salutation and every night up too late.
It has been shaped and pressed and manipulated and loved so tenderly.
It has been looked up and down and turned inside out.
This body
I’ve forgotten
To praise
To love
To honor
To nurture
This body
I’ve remembered
To let rest
And be held
And fed
And let float weightless in the creek
This body
Is not
The same body
As yesterday
And I don’t want it to be
The same body tomorrow
I want it to be molded
By moments
Of wonder
When I get home late from the bar
Saturday night
2am
Stars
Exploding in the sky
So bright
It makes me stop
And breath in the cold
And the ecstasy
It is to be in
This body.

She is serene.
Samsara has no grip on her soul.
She lived a life of transcendence.
The hand of Cycles unclenched itself in the presence of her holiness.
Bowed at her altar,
Made prayers to her name.
She laid a hand upon the youthfulness of my cheek,
Wiped the tears from my eyes,
Illuminated the swallowing darkness
And took with her my grief.
“Let your heart swell in joy,
My little one,
Pray to me with wholeness in your heart,
for I have never known breath so deep,
or peace so unwavering.”
The waves no longer swell and break and crash.
The waters she lays upon are like glass.
Vritti cita niroda (the cessation of waves in the mind space).
I am still here,
And her love coats me as warm as a summer breeze.
I am safe here,
Where I can look into her emerald eyes once more
And just be.

When I think I haven’t worked hard enough,
I look at the soil that has pressed itself deep into the cracks of my skin,
and at the purple stain of wild blackberries that has seeped in.
Hands washed, body showered & bathed,
And its memory of hours of work put in holds tight to my fingers.
The soil & stain know they are safe here.
Welcomed, treasured, revered.
They have become part of my fingerprints,
The way I recognize myself,
Know it’s my own hands I look at that bring tears to my eyes.
Dirt is etched into my fathers ring that I wear,
Amplifying the holiness of the cross it bears.
I am sun stained and
So. So. Tired.
The essence of farming lives in the soreness of my cells.
Picking beans already feels like a thousand years ago,
And tomorrow will come too soon-
Before I am rested.
And I will great the morning sun rising over the mountains will a deep breathe.
I will pull my boots on and my body will ache for the days work-
Begging to feel and overcome the discomfort of hundreds of feet bent over pulling weeds,
unsatisfied until my muscles want to give from exhaustion,
not done until my shirt is soaked with sweat,
and still from depths something asks for more.
More work, more ache, more hours.  
Slowly, please…
Through each painstaking and life giving moment here
So I can absorb the density of every single second I’ve spent with my knees pressed into this altar.
Slowly, please…
Because I know I am safe here.