I’ve learned that you always have to make a mess to create something beautiful
Like the way all if the dirt doesn’t quite fit back into the hole you dug to plant the flower bulb in
Or how hours after you’ve finished painting you’re still finding blue under your fingernails and white by your elbow
And sometimes the mess isn’t so fun to make
Often you face a mess you don’t know how to clean
Some messes take years, decades even, to wash off, to wipe up, straighten
Change, uprooting may feel bad, wrong
It’s scary and painful and it seems like hell at times
But never doubt it’s purpose, it’s season, the way it grows and betters you
It makes you beautiful

"I don't know the first thing about love"
I've never known love that wasn't obligated
An " I love you" didn't cut my throat on its way out
That didn't either send me spiraling into panic
Or fleeing a million miles away from my own body
Nothing but love that trapped and silenced and burned
A love with wicked teeth and acid dripping from it's tongue
That seared me to the core and decided even that was worthless
"But they're family, you gotta love 'em, right?"

Now you stand before me
Saying you want nothing in exchange for your love
Just to be here, together,
But I can't
Can't stay until those arms become a cage
Can't wait for those hands to grab me when I run
Can't let the honey dripping from your lips sour and burn
Can't stand here smiling while I wait for the shoe to drop
Can't wait for that 'nothing' to become 'something' to become 'everything' and I just become a 'thing'
To you

And maybe that's not what love is to you
Maybe your love doesn't come with puppet strings or gleaming teeth that slice
Maybe the mere thought of this definition of love
Sends you reeling with anger and pity and revulsion at the injustice of it all
Maybe it scares you
Maybe it makes you rethink everything you've ever known
About this wild, loud, joyous being you're staring down
And maybe like I thought I'm both too much and not enough, broken and melted and rebuilt in a way
That I don't know the first thing about love

I hate roses
I hate the idea that  love
Has been boiled down to
Being velvety and soft and seductive
Just beauty and pain
Something you can find in a grocery store
Half-wilted next to several of the same
Or in a garden, bred and cultivated
To look pretty in a designated area
Cut back when grown too big or wild
I hate that roses embody culture's idea of femininity

You tell me, "It doesn't have to be this way."
But it's the only way I get through another day
I'm a dreamer and a runaway
You locked me in, told me to stay
"Stay quiet, stay here, stay out of my way"
I'm not a doll in your "happy family" play
Ungag me cause I've got hell of a lot to say
You should have left this dog sleeping where it lay
Don't act like I'm the problem, dear
Just because I can't survive living here

I think that too often we become complacent
We want change and wait for it to come to us
We expect others to welcome us in yet we don't go out to meet them where they are
We crave intimacy but are too afraid to bare all of the hidden, rotten places
We want healing but we're the ones who let the hate fester
We want love but we're afraid of getting attached
We want to try something new but only if you do it first

Beside my window
There is a Japanese maple tree
And it is much taller
Than most of its kind
It survived the fire
That burnt down the original
House it stood next to
I want to be like it someday
I want to be able to withstand
Whatever life throws at me
And become more than I could ever dream

Bare feet pad down stairs
A tea kettle murmurs
And in the darkness the loneliness for once
Comforts under the light of a single bulb

Here, in this place, time ceases and
Fatigue bears no claim and
The brash clutter of day is no more
Here in the in-between of existence

Where failures of the previous day refresh and
The imminence of the next's tasks does not yet hold
Here there is peace that sleep lacks
And a solitude fear refuses to enter

This is the refuge of sinners and saints
Where dreamers thrive and wise men seek