I heard your voice thru my desperate screams
So I clawed thru my ravaged soul
Just to stand by your side
I admired my own carnage
And handed you my heart

As I stood in a room with death today, she spoke of meaningful things. Peace and life and love and loss.  She grabbed my hand and said "do not rush to me, for I will meet you at your time.  Stop giving your power to the little things and don't let them tell you you're blind. Your cross, your bag, your little flag have no meaning with me. What comes is your soul, the spirit inside, that's all that I can see. For I am nothing to fear as long as you've known yourself. When your time comes accept my hand and leave proud of what you have done."  

My advice to you, as it was given to me, is to honor your soul inside. It's what was here before and all that will be left after to join the earth we come from. I shared the air and touched the skin of death today and saw how much life there is.  Don't waste your time feeling lost, just choose your path.  Don't judge the face or body in the mirror, for it is a literal shell that you do not keep. Cultivate who you are inside like a newly planted seed, and when your time comes, leave being a mighty tree to be given back to Mother Earth.

I fear that I shall die without ever being truly known.
As the autumn nears I pull more into myself
Carrying my bleeding beating heart in my open palm blood dripping between my fingers and down my wrist
Droplets disappearing into the earth
Desperately holding myself in
Feeling my fingernails claw at my insides
My soul begging to be let out
To be free.
This is the harvest of what I have sown
This is the ultimate Autumn
The forever alone

The moon is beautiful tonight.
Full like the womb of a mother.
Growing and giving life.
Waiting to birth a new cycle.
Cycles that change the tides.
Wash away the old.
Birth in the new.
The moon is radiant and glowing.
Spreading light in the darkest of moments.
She exists so we know we are never lost.
She births hope.
Regeneration.
Cycles.
The moon is beautiful tonight.

I wonder who I would be if I had never been told to stop singing so loudly.
Melodies and lyrics that used to come from my heart filling my chest until they fell from my mouth dancing around my tongue.
Belted out loudly because I wanted the earth to know that I could hear her songs and wanted to offer my voice so everyone else could hear too.
What if it had been understood that I was coping with the separation from my mother and loss of my father?
Would I speak more freely now?
Would my throat open instead of shut down and deny that I ever knew how to sing?
Would my hum be a roar?

Who would I be if I had been encouraged to continue to paint?
Continually inspired to find expression in color and shape.
Reminded that the mysterious blots always created some type of magnificence.
How much more free would my soul be if the color spectrum had not been drained from my childhood world?
Placed with a family that didn't believe in nature, or color, or freedom.  
Forced into black and white with not even gray.  
Would I still be dripping and swiping across a blank canvas and know how to pull colors from emptiness?
Would I be unafraid?

How much stronger would I be if I hadn't been told to be quiet when my insides were screaming that something was wrong?
Would my boundaries be stronger?
Would my voice be louder?
How much space would I be comfortable taking up if I hadn't been taught to cower?

How much more open would my heart and comfort be if motherhood had not been torn away?
If I had never been told I wasn't enough?
Or I was too young?
What if motherhood had not been taken from my arms while milk dripped from my ******* and my heart was all I was allowed to send with him?
No one asks about the birth mom...they just move on because she's a vessel for someone else's happiness.
What if I had been supported?
Would it be easier to feel close to
Or good enough for my children now?
Would I feel unafraid of being accepted by them?
Would I tear myself apart less?
Would I not worry they'd be better off with my partner if something happened to me?  Or to us?
No one ever asks about that story.
Not even when they see their own children and understand that kind of love.
They never see how fragile I was left.  
How heartbroken.
No one has ever been careful around me.

What if my strength, independence, spirit, voice, or intelligence, had been respected?
What if I had been celebrated and pushed into that growth?
What if I hadn't been held down or been too much?
What if my fire had been tended?

Who would I be if I hadn't been the only one to hold onto me?

He doesn't like to be noticed but he's impossible to miss and impossible to hang on to.  
You can't tie someone like him down.  
He'd chew off his arm in what you'd perceive as self sabotage,
but for him it's survival.
His freedom is what brings him home to you at night.
Maybe not consecutively but he always come back....always.
All the reasons you come to hate him, resent him, miss him are all the reasons you loved him in the first place.
You loved his intoxicating freedom.
You loved that you could smell it on him.
You loved that when he was close enough
you felt like it was yours.
So you tried to hold him tighter.
Convinced that if you could just make him love you enough he'd stay
Missing that he was loving you as much as he could.
So instead you began killing him.
Resenting him for not being what you needed, even when he was all you ever wanted.
Slowly...watching him die without even realizing it.
Yelling at him.
Screaming at him.
Begging him.
Cursing him.
Causing him to hate who he is because it makes him "broken".
Hating that the pull within him is too strong for him to deny
Breaking his own heart because it was too broken to just love you the way you wanted to be loved
but he loved you...
By the time he had eaten away at half his arm you expected the pain would be too much for him to bare so he'd stay.
Only to watch him run on 3 legs crying out into the night.
Singing her song that called to his being.
He is the wolf.
And she is his moon.
Not even the sea can resist her call.
How on earth could it be expected of he?

His pull was undeniable by her
She felt it across the vastness