today is the day i decide to love me,
instead of you.
how, i’m not quite sure. although
i’m sure that i want to.

Finally I am awake,
No more passings-by.
Finally I remember,
No more faded shapes.
Finally I can feel,
No more shallow blinks.
Finally I am here,
No more losing grips.
There is no closure to these lines,
Today it started, the existence of mine.

When you ask:
Who am I looking for
in a companion?
Most people say
they want love.
Or care.
Or comfort.
I want someone
who thinks me clever.
Who gets my jokes.
Who feels the romantic word
like a caress,
phrasing, like a gentle kiss.
Who deems me special
like I've always wanted to be.
Because I need me to see
that I love me,
just not unconditionally.

One can never truly die
Until the great one
Sings his song
We must keep pushing
Moving
Growing
For there are challenges
Trials and Disparity
Lurking around each corner
We must continue to fight
Each day we must become anew
Touched by the sun’s ever cruel
Gaze

Sitting here waiting.
For what?
For a sign or a chance or an invitation.
I don’t really know.
But maybe it’s time for me
To become a sign or a chance or an invitation.

To stop waiting for the world to love me,
And instead learn to love myself

I know myself better than you.
In my heart there is a banshee waiting to drown themselves on the shores of a beach covered in discarded glass.
Her body ragged, bruised, and gaunt in every view.
She’s sharp and harsh with every cut that may pass.
Her hair obscures her eyes with a taupe wash of strands.
She pierces into the tiny drums with a venom only meant to break my spirit and erode past the bones.
Into my soul she will cut with those talons on her hands.
I can’t progress without her because she is my cornerstone.
My foundation would collapse without her haunting inside.
She’s seen my cracks and my missing parts.
Instead of leaving me numb she waters my plants.
Together we craft love and we create art.
She raised the goblin in my head to laugh and dance.
He leads us through her pain.
It’s something that helps me smile no matter how heavy the rain.
He swallows the flames we light each day or eliminates the obstacles in our way.
His skin so full and flushed;
It contrasts so greatly with her hair unbrushed.
His eyes so clear, bright, and colorful.
I can feel the joy radiate so extensively.
What he gives so soft like the silky breeze she echoes back with a call so guttural.
I always valued him more so selfishly.
There would be no him without her.
There would be no parts in me without the parts I don’t prefer.
So before you tell me that I’m intense or too much;
I hope you see how important they both are inside.
They are more than the things you can see or touch.
They are every laugh that I’ve had or every tear that I’ve cried.
I don’t need you to believe that I am the right amount between too much and just enough for you.
I believe in my own beauty and wholeness; we all do.

Still more, in words

In experience

Confusing Familiarity with Comfort

Confusing Comfort with Peace

Reifying confusion, but not successfully

Yielding, on my knees, heart to the sky

Forgetting

Seeing through, a single pinhole in a perfectly realistic backdrop

Pinholes everywhere, more than can be contained

Not containing

Torn all over

Dispelling everything

Stripping away the Stripping away

Trying to stand very still and very quite so I can feel, hear, sense

Perfect realism

Wanting to be convinced by rage

Agitation, but only conceptual

Feeling tight

Feeling rehearsed

Feeling like an imposter

Wanting to impress

Wanting to be convinced of Self, of Realness

Fortified by others knowing, or preferably- admiration

Like being constructed out of sets of other peoples' eyes

Like being made real by propagating in more minds, many more minds, specific minds. In countless beating and virtual hearts, likes, thumbs up

Not wanting to be forgotten, while alive, while dead

Taxed by maintenance and constant imminent collapse

Compassion, like collapsing into a safe lap

Relinquishing

No pretense

Bare being

More naked than when unclothed

Total exposure

Outed, in the light of knowing

Self forgetting and glimpses of freedom

Trusting sighing

Always loving Sad, not despondent, just sad

Feeling continuous

Feeling fragmented

Feeling like motion, like flow

Feeling like thousands of still frames, constant flickering

Grasping at impermanence, visceral

Resting in the middle

Dancing down the tightrope

Knowing perfect poise, brief equilibrium

Reifying stability. Gone.

Everything is hysterically funny

Hysterically

But also, sometimes, just plain humorous

And absurd

Crying

Loving people

Grateful for people

Seeing beauty everywhere

Encountering this, intimate, me, indistinguishable being, but everywhere

Ouch

Awareness

Always coming back

Like an epic

Like a great love story

Like the last wring of that silk dress you weren't supposed to squeeze dry

Feeling like I shouldn't know what I know, like I couldn't. This must be illegal, cosmically illegal

Knowing the inside of my hand

Knowing teenage shame

Knowing being yelled at, towered over, by my dad, in a narrow hallway, eyes glued to speckled floor tiles, feeling small

Loving with my body, with my hands, with my mouth, with my whole entire strong softness

Loving with understanding

Loving with teeth and nails

Music, lacerating

Crying with tears, and snot, and heaving

Becoming one single, concentrated point

Wanting to envelope everything. Really. Actually. Like physically with my body.

Knowing I am not this voice

Or this writer

Or this narrator

Though I am also all that