I've learnt that
I crave freedom like it's fuel
To power my mind, my heart, my bloodstream
but I've also learnt that to be free is to be wholly unafraid
It's day eighteen of my living out in the wilderness but I still haven't once stayed out alone in the dark
Although I might appear free to you
With only the few items in my charcoal gregory backpack
Climbing up to the summits and down again
Sitting naked by the ponds and chasing the sunsets
Lost in thought as I walk the length of the trail
Internally, I am swarming with fear
but tonight as the sky darkens and the trees fold over my head and I hear only the chirping of the birds
The little pattering of the chipmunks and the cuspy winds
I refuse to be afraid of the dark
No, I won't crawl right into my tent and wait for morning
No, I'll stay here in the wild
And oscillate between stillness and dancing
Under the vastness of the night sky
Warming myself in just my orange sleeping bag
Because I know that my freedom is born only once my fear dies
And so tonight I am being born again
Under the stars
Alone and unafraid
Tonight, right now
I am letting the fear die out
Just a little
Just enough
For me to be born free again

I closed my eyes today to meditate
And of course the flow began
That endless stream of words
But this time is was of a different kind
It was a strong rush rush of forgotten words that loomed over me
And whilst still breathing
I started sweating
For it was the scent of an old world
Those words
Of rigidity and rust; rules and atrophy
Layers and layers of shame

A world so deeply rooted; tied with a thick rope
To the words that built it

I tried to get the flow of words to halter
So as to not evoke the emotions stitched into those idioms
Flooding into consciousness
I've spent years toiling
To create a universe sprouted from new words
So what could this be but an utter attack on my new reality

But they become an outpour, the words
This sort of multi-sensory experience…

and I'm fixed to them with glue
To the fiery words like
Tznuis, Bas Melech, Shidduchim
That I'd heard all too many times
Because I'm only a women
The rabbis would tell me
And my hands were meant for baking bread
My ******* for giving milk
Never really mine at all

And also the Tume, Trief, Off the Derech, Goyim
Words that rang into my ears constantly  
Maybe because they were always said, or maybe because
These were words I couldn’t close my ears off to hearing
But I hear them again now even louder
Painting a purity and an impurity
An us and a them
A superiority and racism
Endless hierarchies

But then the good words began to flood my mind
The Zmiros, Little Tzadikel, Kinderlech
Words that built the sounds of my family singing
The Love and shelter
Joyous togetherness
The simple Simplicity
The words that know for real
Mashiach will come

Then there were the greetings
The Good Yontifs, Gut Vach's
Because who are we but one large social unit
Bound by the words we share
And the Boruch Hashem's, Kneina Hara's
Secured that the bad things don’t get too bad
And the good things don’t ruin themselves

The flow of words continued
Like a tragic comedy
A bad and a good
And a nothing and a everything
The grief of a lost innocence; the shadow of brick walls

But I remembered that joy of breathing deep into my uncaged lungs
Accessing a fresh new whiff of clean air

For I have built a world of new words
A new vocabulary
of Words like Mind, Body, Spirit
****** freedom
Intersectionality, Sustainability
Kindred Souls
Unity
Compassion
Holding the Space

But what to do when the flow of an old world
Built so powerfully by its words
Strikes at me suddenly
Unexpected
And all the new words I've forged don’t seem to matter
At all

And then the tears come down
Streaming down
One droplet at a time

And then my heart feels heavy
And dense and light
Serendipitous

And then I dance with the tears
Like they're pieces of art
Colored and nuanced and warm

And then the tears come down
Streaming down
One hurt at a time

And then I write out the emotions
With a thin fragile pencil
Testing my own prophetic sense

And then my mind gets foggy
And I talk out loud to myself
Under my pink bedsheets

And then the tears come down
Streaming down
Then they pause for a moment

Caged inside a cardboard box
Sealed three times but still
Marked handle with care

That’s when the tears turn into memories
Felt memories
Flashing one at a time

Like some Indie movie
The memories flow in a blur
Lost friends in parking lots

Friends sipping mountaintops chai
Green Bench talks
Hammocks swinging

That’s when the tears become a dance
And the memories a Trance
Tingling fingers

Long pleated skirts
Polluted Brooklyn streets
Beards against my chest

And then the tears begin again
Serendipitous, lonely
Becoming a loss

And me under my pink sheets
I let the tears mourn my loss
As I recapitulate the past
Turned in memories

And then the feelings come back
Lost art those memories
A simple sudden awakening of my unconscious

The hurt, the loneliness
The pain
Heart, vision, heart, mind
Washed away in a puddle of
Tears

Im not a child
But I walk around with my eyes wide open
Surprised by the little new things I learn
And traumatized
By the scary ones

Like the three toddler steps forward
Holding on tight to the hand that gave it life
Never letting go

I'm not a child
but I listen out for my mothers voice
and crave the basic things
Like love and protection, safety and locked doors
Maybe a kiss on the forehead once in a while

I have tantrums in my bedroom
And cry puddles and puddles of tears
In moments of frustration

No, I'm not a child
but I look to everyone else for guidance
Directions; maybe even real specific ones
Marked with a red sharpee on my bedroom wall

So that I always know when I wake up
how and where and when
To turn on this journey

No im not a child
But I feel primitive and undeveloped
Fetal like
Overwhelmed and confused by the bright lights
And bright colors plastered onto the universe
All the time

No, Im not a child
Not in the way my long hair falls past my round *******
Nor by the anxious crinkles on my forehead
Not by the way I smeared on red lipstick for the club
Or reached for the suit on interview day

I'm not a child
Not by the existential quandaries
Or the words I type anxiously on my keyboard
Not in the way I check my bank account each day
Before I check out at the grocery  
Or by the way I flaunt my independence
And preach about dismantling the patriarchy
No I'm not a child
Not in the way I look or act or seem

But I have a secret to share
And its been masked by shame and illusion

I still feel like a child
And really I don’t know
If that will ever change

As a little kid, you protected me at night
When I said the shema one word at a time
Repeating the lines about the angels, I envisioned them surrounding me, protecting me and then drifted off to sleep in a womb like serenity
I prayed dillgently to you at school prayer time
I got stickers from my teachers "morahs" we called them
Who told me to scream out the prayers even louder
And so I did and  I got a star for best davener
My teachers always told me, God was proud of me, I knew you were
You cured all the sick people I prayed for - all of them
You sat next to me in  shuls, at the brachos parties, the tehillim groups
There was no healing without you
You told me what I could and couldn’t eat
And I listened
You were my inner voice, my soul, my mind
God you were my everything
You made me make sense of the chaos

But one day
Like waking up from a nightmare
You just weren't there
Not in the way I imagine you anyways
And when I realized it was all a façade
You just faded into fog
Like a drifting cirrus cloud
Popped like an overfull balloon
And I haven't seen you since

And so I lost my safety
My father
My friend
My guidebook
And I mourn

For now I'm left with miles and miles of earth
Mobs of people
Faces and more faces
Subway lines and library silences
Coffee shops and hidden pubs
Music, art, and human opinion
To make sense of on my own

Like an intricate maze
Foul play it is
This world, this overshadowed earth
A total confusion
God you left me
And now I'm all alone