The terra is only one
planted in clay soil
one planet of earth!

The sneaked out nightingale
here is never gone.
Unleashes soprano  
at the same ancient roses'
still a perfumed home!

It's the starry upside's
dark down deep hole.
Sunset melting shadow
down the half light moon!
Eyes on in toto cool
after the day painter sun
is done colouring in full.

Guess, up from the sunrise mountain
who beams back tomorrow
into this unfathomed serene clay-mole?
Again see the sun follows by the moon!

I am a therapist

But

I wanted to be an artist


Clay under my fingernails, in my curls, drying on my skin.
Filling up my moleskine
Occupying my thoughts, my dreams,
each moment of every day




Now.....

Now, I listen to people's pain, their sorrow, their hurt.

5 years of grad school, fancy acronyms at the end of my name, they can call me doctor...some do. some insist. perhaps it makes them feel like I am more than just an imperfect human like they are.

My clients come to me with their pain, I see them, I hear them, I try, I try so hard to soothe them, make them feel worthy, make them feel good enough. make them feel loved. deserving of love.

Some days, being a psychologist provides so much meaning to my life, other days...other days I cry and punish myself for not pursuing art.

Why didn't I do it?
Why was I so scared?
Why did I let the **** talking from my parents and the judgements of my family keep me from doing what I loved?

WHY.



Hey, you want to know how to make me cry instantaneously?
               Ask me about what I gave up to be where I am today.


        what I lost for the acronyms,
        what I lost for the title,
        what I lost for the salary,
        what I lost so my mom could tell people her daughter was a
                            "doctor" (not a real one even still)

Ask me what I lost.

Ask me how I lay awake at night, stare off into space, doing math in my mind, thinking, wondering, planning out how to grow my practice to make enough to rent a studio space, buy a kiln, and make art once again.

Ask me why I got a doctorate in psychology so all I could think about was how to make art again.


Ask me.
I dare you.


My own therapist just did and my make up smeared.
I think sobbed is the technical term.

Or perhaps, I just let all the feelings and sadness bleed out of me. every now and again they do

every now and again I let down my defenses, remove the distractions, and find the time to really think and reflect on what I lost.
what I gave up to allow myself to make money off of listening to people.
I allow myself to be used and profit from it.


JUST like my family uses me and takes up far too much space.

I provide care to others because it's my job, but it's also what I've always known how to do, what I was taught to do.

Taking care of others is ******* exhausting.
I love my job.
I hate my job.


Ya know what?

I never hated art.
I never did.
Art never took from me.
Clay never used me and spit me out or told me things like "I'm not getting anything from you" like my clients have told me.

clay Doesn't take.
clay only gave.
ceramics only ever gave.

WHY the **** did I not allow myself to take?
WHY did I create a life for myself where I am continuously giving and people are continuously taking?

I am so ******* empty and so ******* tired.

I just want to make art.

all i ever wanted was to make art.

Molding lumps of clay,
Sticky, earthen residue,
shaped to doughy love.

Sometimes it burns,
The feeling of your heart when it’s hollow, when there is nothing.
It’s just wood, and it burns so easily.
It leaves you with nothing, just dried up pieces of what was there before.
It aches, and it can never be the same again, ever.
Do you know what it feels like to beg?
Do you know how it feels to be so completely desperate, you’d sell your soul?
You’d give up anything just for a touch.
It’s drugs, it’s flesh, it’s all heart.
That is how it feels, because I’ve felt it.
It damages the deepest, most vulnerable parts of who you are as a person.
It has the power to change you.
It has the power to mold you into something completely different from who you were, and what you started out as.
It changes you, and it is so easy, to.. just let it.
To form a person, as if they were clay it is so easy because I’ve let that happen and it hurts.
But to ache for something, to need it, to crave it.
That hurts too.

My legs are heavier than I am used to,
Except it feels so familiar,
I think this happens every night when I try to run in my dreams,
And its like forcing each step forward through thick syrup
Hardening wet concrete
A rapidly thickening slurry coating me.

I am weighed down by it, down on my knees now, hoping that grabbing the ground and pulling myself forward will increase my momentum
Ripping out handfuls of grass trying to get the earth to treadmill beneath me
Clay under my nails, more slurry, more layers,

The earth is a part of my lungs now
Wet pink webbing hardening from the outside in
Thin tendrils brittle and breaking off, sun-dried,
Cracking and dusty and making its way up my throat
A river bed of mud consuming the space in my mouth,
I reach in with my fingers and scoop out the muck and throw it but it keeps coming,
Filling and refilling my mouth, faster than my fingers can dig it out
Thick like dentist's putty, coating my tongue and teeth like taffy

The fear is always there
The fear mixed with the drowning feeling, drowning in wet clay,
Suffocating and afraid
That it will still be the same even when I wake up

Like an aberration
A colossal of ways  
Is when the moonlight
Meets the sun raise  

                                           Time-lined asphalt
                              Orb shadowing the dawn
                          Avoiding flickering wounds
                                                   By moving on

Like a neighbor
A wall mould to clay
That is the burden
Between night and day