I step outside for a smoke
Just me ‘n the pups in this cold morning light
I leave the door open just to let the breeze bite
I don’t want to forget
I don’t want to leave
I find myself wanting to sit in these moments
And holding on with such force
I can see my hands going white
Just trying not to lose
This cold morning light

Well hello twenty four
Didn’t hear you knocking at my door
Woke up to happy birthday baby
Me wondering where good morning went
Out the door to early you just missed him
Dancing in the breeze on a whim
Here I am now twenty four
No surprise, there’s still skeletons beneath the floor
The darkness didn’t go away
Like we had hoped
Getting older doesn’t cure it
Just makes it easier to hide
Still wish I had died
Yet here we are at twenty four
In the dessert heat
No reprieve from the sun
But the suns healing
And the healings only begun
So much left to do
With no idea how to start
Just hoping that I can find my heart
Buried it years ago
Now at twenty four
Hoping I can find it, when I open the right door

From the dead ravens sorrow
Ran the poor mother
Just a small sparrow
No more together

The dead shall rise
And we will be once more
The difference in size
Will be no more

The mother cry’s
The raven caws
The sparrow dies
Locked in a crocs jaws

The mirror I stare in
Before me now
I bare my sin
Bare, upon my brow

I see a raven stand behind
Cloaked in darkness
I am no more

She had a waist so small he could cup his hands completely around it
This book I read as a young girl
The characters were ooing and ahing about this tiny waisted girl
How pretty she was and how amazing
I remember taking my hands
And trying to reach them around
And they never did reach
I wanted to be a boy, I wanted to play football, and walk around with no shirt
I wanted everyone to think I was a boy
Every boy I read about
Every boy I saw on tv
I mimicked
Boys didn’t get touched
Boys could be safe
So maybe if I acted enough like a boy
I could make it all stop
All the girls my age, there shirts didn’t seem to fit as tight as mine did
My dad said I looked like a ****
My shirts being so tight
My face was red
I didn’t know what I had done
I was just a kid, mom had bought me these clothes
But I had outgrown them they said
I never wore tight clothes again
I wore my clothes baggy
So people couldn’t see me
So they didn’t know how I was framed
We were at a park with some friends one summer day
We were swimming in a creek
I was walking with my mom back to the car
And I heard the cute boys swimming up the way
Say to each other “is that thing a boy or a girl?”
I wanted to cry
I just ran after my mom faster and tried to keep it in
These are the things that make life difficult for women
The things men as understanding and kind as they can be can still never understand
The things that we can’t always put in words
The things we all feel
But rarely have the courage to say
These are the things we as women need to learn how to express so that we may move on and create a new world for little girls
Because until we learn how these problems in us started, we can not learn how to end them.

The two choices
One passionate and overwhelming
Bright as the sun
Like a shining star in the dark of night
Nothing but a blinding light
Fast and furious
Everything all at once
So much love and so much beauty
All a force so strong I can barely say no
The other
A peace so calming
A place in your arms that I call home
A safety that I’ve never felt
A peace and a serenity
A place I can breath
A certainty to things and a lack of fear
Now to decide which I want
And which I need
The two choices
Laying before me
I look in both your eyes
So filled with love
Both in love with me
And unsure of who to pick
I’m drawn of course to one
But my brain is telling me
To stay where it’s safe
But my heart yearns after more
Unsure of what to do
And unsure of where to go
I stay standing
Staring at both choices
Incapable of making a decision