Phase 1:
The rain was eating the world
The acid drops falling into attack
At first they had been glistening
Sparkling clear, like giant glass tears
So beautiful a child held out his tongue
But then they had began frightening the flowers, puckering holes in their pretty petals
They made the house's crisp coats of paint stream in desperate colorful tears
The roads filled, like acid rivers
Rivers that no sail could survive
The world dissolving, right before my very eyes
Like a canvas being erased from inside its frame

I was running with my umbrella
Clear plastic hexagon on a handle
Hovering above my head
Like an insect’s stretched out wings
Sheltering me from the storm
My magic umbrella
My rain boots pacing faster, acid avoiding my eyes
Getting to the dandelion garden
A garden where not just any
kind of poppies grew
But silver poppies

The garden was dripping in cobwebs
Shining like stretched maps of ice
Medinal mushrooms formed in clusters
***** and distinct
My head was spinning from the odor
The garden’s sleeping spell overcoming me

A lightening bolt cracked outside
Splitting the sky into two
Toxic clouds steaming into the atmosphere

Phase Two:
Toxic air
The animals breathing in its chemistry
Their eyes growing wild
The barks leaping from their vocal chords
In short snaps at first
Then as the insanity ensues, stretched energy
Howling, growling, wild
Ravenous
The humans locking their doors

My heart still beating
Like a drum
Searching for a silver poppy
The garden encased like a giant glass box
Holding the plant that ends the storm
Me like a fish in a bowl, separated from the rest of the world
Trying to find the poppy
To save it

My eyes searching
The silver poppy lying somewhere in this glass greenhouse
Each time, to be found in a different place
Like lightening, never striking in the same place twice
A silver poppy never grows in the same place twice
Once plucked, reappears somewhere else
Wherever you would least suspect
Somewhere in this garden

My eyes dry and stinging,
My hair tangled and tired
My clothes with poked holes from where tiny droplets of acid rain hit
Raggedy
The poisonous plants begging me to touch them
Like Eve and the apple
The dirt has no poppies
No silver poppy to be found
But then

The water pool
Cool and placid
Like a mill pond
I dive in
Silver catching my eye
Like glass
The poppy looking like almost any poppy
But silver

Lying like a secret at the bottom of the pond
My fingers grasping at the poppy's thin throat
I had swam in like a mermaid
I emerge like an animal
On a mission
Cupping the silver poppy to my chest
Like a baby dove

I escape the greenhouse doors
I pluck the poppy's petals, scattering them into the rain
At that moment
A hungry dog approaches me, quickly morphing into a wolf
Mid-leap, its teeth about to sink into my neck
The silver petals pressed flat into the concrete by the rain
The acid burning my skin

Phase 3:
And then
Relief
The rain tastes sweet like lilacs and water
Me turning into circles as the dog presses me with wet sloppy kisses
The rainbow shining, an upside-down smile
The plants glistening and growing
The birds chirping, their voices light like silhouettes
The world in harmony
Children running out of their houses
The animals rolling in the grass, the woodlands

Me, standing, left holding the silver stem
Tears rolling down my cheeks
How many times would I have to do this?
My mouth like a bow
My hands like a lotus
My whispers like a prayer
How many times would I have to stop the chaos?
More tears

Phase 3: The Maker's Forest*
Then, giant hands scooping me up
My body, the length of the pinky
The giant hands without arms
Stretched out to me from the sky

Carrying me
Across forests and fields
I peer over the thumb
Passing over deserts and oceans
A tiny breeze tugging at my hair
Sleep overtaking me
How many times will I have to stop the chaos?
Dissolving into my dreams
Like a tiny doll in my Maker's hands

I wake up in darkness
Except for a crack of sunlight, smiling in
I’m in a sphere enclosure
My hands tear at the two walls of the split
Breaking open the egg I was in
The soft segments of the shell
Lying in cracked pieces around me
I am in a nest, with three other eggs
A nest high up in a tree

I climb down the tree
Branch by branch
I am in the Maker’s forest
The Maker’s healing forest

I have heard before we have a Maker
But I never believed it
How could I
If we had a maker, why would our world keep falling apart
Why would I keep having to retrieve the silver poppy to remedy it

I walk down the forest path, getting closer to the sky blue cottage
The path is lined with evergreens, redwoods, trees tall and high
Filled with hundreds of nests and eggs

Phase 5: The Maker's Paint Studio
I open the white picket gate
And a painter emerges
Dressed in off-white overalls and an apron, carrying a brush with a tip of ruby pink paint
No words yet
Just sparkling blue eyes, shaggy grey hair, and leathery creased skin

I catch sight of myself in the reflection of a puddle and gasp
My lips are ruby pink like a bow
My skin is healed and smooth
Like porcelain
My hair is soft and silky
Falling in waves down my summer dress
The whole forest is bright and shining
awake and alive

How did I come to look like this
How did I come to heal so fast?
Why is this forest so beautiful?

Come with me
The painter says
I step inside, the room filled with pallets of paint and aisles
The walls standing like giant canvases
Covered in illustrations and images
The golden desert I passed over on one wall

The sparkling ocean whose breeze tugged my hair on the next
And on the Maker's canvas, me
I’m standing there, the silver stem in my hand
But the world around me, it's not falling apart nor dissolving

Its beautiful
I look at the painter
The chaos I say
I can’t take it anymore

I tell him
This world you paint
It pains me
Paint something prettier
Don’t ever paint a storm again
Why can’t you always paint the pretty picture on the canvas?
That’s the world I want to live in

But I do, the painter replies
His eyes kind

But I am not the only painter
He says looking at me

My illustrations, he smiles
The people I paint,
They can paint too
And the world you see,
Sometimes it’s the world you paint

You mean, the storm? I painted it?
He smiles
It wouldn’t be very fair if I was the only one allowed to paint now would it?
"How do I stop? How do I stop painting storms?
I don’t ever want to leave this pretty forest"

He faces a white canvas, starts painting a tiny girl
Sometimes what we see, he says
Is more of a reflection of what could be, of our minds eye, than what is really there
Storms do happen of course

But the storm you repeatedly see
Is the storm of your mind
Let me ask you something
Are you afraid?

Yes, I reply
And what are you afraid of?
Well everything, I reply.
There is so much to be afraid of

Then that is what you are seeing, he says
Free yourself
Of all nonexistent time, of what could be and what was
And just be exactly where you are
And you will see things as they really are
Your paintings will add the beautiful details to my paintings

With that the, little girl, the one with the short brown hair and pink dress steps off the canvas
She smiles at us
And then she opens the cottage door, her ruby lips and blue eyes taking in the forest around her, walking further into it

Phase 6: The Storm of your Eye
And then I’m back, with my hexagonal umbrella
Running to the garden
Acid rain splashing around me
Instead though, I stop
The world doesn’t need the poppy, I hear my Maker say
The poppy isn’t even real
I stop and close my eyes
Forget my doubts
And everything that could go wrong
I forget everything
The blood running through my veins, the splashing acid, the storming clouds
My minds goes blank
What the world needs
Is me

When I open my eyes
The world is quiet
Then I hear the sweet chirping of birds singing
Children playing

An old man walking his dog
“Looks like it might rain” he says, pointing to a far away cloud
I close my umbrella
I won’t be needing it*

~ JLH

Thoughts fall from her head to her heart
The sky strewn in ribbons of stars
Falling in trails of wishes, such a piece of art

She thinks she’s insignificant, just so small
Just a collection of blood, skin, and secrets
But what if she realized, the sky could fall?

That the butterfly effect was true*
That the world existed perfectly
Because of people just like you
~JLH

She thought she was broken
So she began to search
She looked through lonely drawers for thumbtacks
Through soft cardboard boxes
For superglue
On worn wooden desks
For staplers and tape

She looked for
Fastening devices
Fixing tools
To piece herself together

She felt her heart was fraying
And that her buttons were pulling at their thread

She wanted to fasten
One sleepless night
To a restful one

One bad dream
To a good one

One rush of tears
To clear eyes

One cluster of confusing thoughts
To a simple idea

But fastening is for dolls
Dolls need fixing, adjusting

People
Don't

We come undone
Only to find ourselves
More strongly
Stitched back together*

~JLH

I know you were brought into
This world
Sooner than
We thought

But you were brought
Into this World
Like a Storm
Of Grace
Half the Weight
Of an Average
New-Born Baby
With Twice the Strength

And you were brought in
By the nature of Grace
Grace is mysterious
As Anne Lamott
Has once said:

"I do not understand the
mystery of Grace
Only that she meets us
where we are at.
And does not leave us
Where she found us"

So that is exactly what you
Have done to us
You have met us on Earth
Right where we were at
And now
We are in a place
That you did not initially find us
For it is because of you
We are now in a better place
Painful although it may be
It is for your existence
That our Earth and our Worlds
Are now brighter

You might be asking why?
Your parents might fall asleep
At night
Wondering why
You were brought into
The world
This way
But even though
It wasn't what we expected
Superheroes
Aren't brought into this World
Like the Average babies are
Its not that the other babies
Aren't just as special
Its just that God
Sometimes looks down
Upon us
And decides we need heroes
And heroes grow
From hard, but beautiful, pretty places

In your Mother's Womb
And your Father's Heart
Grace
Found the home
To Grow a Superhero

So why did you leave her womb
So early?
You might wonder
Well the truth is
You left just when
You were meant to
We just didn't know it yet
We needed you sooner
Than you realized

And so you might be wondering
Why you are in a glass box
But inside that glass box
Is so much more than just space
Yes, there is space
But circling you
Are powerful forces

Inside your glass box
Strength Lies
Like a cloud around
Is Your Father's heart
So big
From enduring
Loss  
And living that loss with love
All at once
His strength
Allowing him to hold
And suspend
Both powers at once
His loss did not become lighter to hold
He got stronger from holding it
And now he is becoming stronger
Holding your presence

And your Mother
Well in her Womb
Grace found
Love intertwined
With Patience and Beauty
The kind of Beauty
Beauty that can pierce someone's soul
Because it is the rare kind - both inner and outer
And a storm of a Woman's Strength
That so many women
Do not have
And may never have
Her confidence is quiet and fierce

And from her heart
Grows Roses from
Stems dotted with
Thorns
Roses of Love and Beauty
And Thorns of Protection

You see
This made it inevitable
That you would
Not be your average human
You couldn't have been
The world needed you

And inside your glass box
We look in
And see Glass, like truth
We see your Mother's Grace
And your Father's Strength
And then Space
Space for you to Grow

No, this is not easy
Your Mother and Father
Must lie awake at night
With questions
They don't even bother asking yet
Because the doctor's
Will say
Well first
We must learn and see this
Before we can ask and see about that

But you are lying inside a space
Of Love
From Family extended
Like tree branches
All around you
The World was waiting for you

And Superheroes like you
Are born not from simplicity
But adversity

How difficult it must be
We are suspended
In prayer
Unable to predict the future
But none of us can predict
The future for any of us
What we have is the Presence
And right now
Your Presence
Has changed our World
You are a Superhero
You powers
Upon your birth
Came out
Touching us
Like waves and shocks
All at once
Our prayers remain with you
And your strength and presence
Are the gift
You are
You couldn't have been born ordinary
You are extraordinary
And that, with you love
And ours
Is your Presence
It is your gift and ours
To share

The beauty and gift
Of your birth
Is that we not need
Wait even a second
To feel the power
Of your existence
And how you
Have changed our world
That's why we call
Your existence*
Presence

~JLH

This moment is final
They tell us
This is the end
Coming up against a new beginning

But how do we make sense of time
How can time
Be framed in bookends
One hour marked apart from another
One day pulled apart from the next

We try to take things apart
But graduating
Doesn't end our education
Stories live outside of their pages
Ideas
Stretch beyond their words
And People
Live even outside of their bodies
Their ashes swept up by the wind and water and mountains
Their genes alive in their children

Some moments
Some people
Are too big
They continue
To live
Into infinity

I think our ancestors had it right
When we began to wear time on our wrists
Not in a Line, or Square, or Single Dot
But in a Circle
To Infinity*

~JLH

This whole time
I have been
Searching for Her
In Movies, Books, & Fiction

Wanting her to come off
The pages
Or jump out of the screen
So I can recognize her
And resonate and relate

All so I know I exist
Outside of myself
I wanted a character
To make sense of me
Pull my paradoxical-self together
In fiction form

Be a strong woman
And a vulnerable girl
A student of Law
And
Fairy Tales
A believer in logic and reason
But also all the abstract and obscure
To believe only what you see
And know the most real existence
Is what I cannot see

To laugh and smile with your eyes
Even after your eyes have seen so much death
To be this combination
That people claim I am
That is so rare

I am an enigma
They say

Normally people search for
Themselves
In the real world
But since that is where I already exist

Fiction seemed
More real than Life

I wanted to find
Myself in the world of
Fiction

A character
That could make sense of myself
So I knew I existed
In the real world

I wanted to know
That someone else
Could have pieced me together
And imagined me
And drawn my character in its arc

So I can relate
To more than just
A character from a Soap Opera
Or a heroine with a Bow and Arrow
Who is so real
Yet never smiles or laughs

But then
I realized
If someone
Could have pieced me together
In formula- fiction with such ease
I wouldn't exist
With all the paradoxes and complexities
That real humans do
In real life*

~JLH