sway

the hum surrounds

and whisper quiet air drifts down

as we all sway with our seats. 

tracks made by us all as we go

away

from something and 

towards

something else. 

memories shush silent

can be heard in the 

eyes of your fellow

traveler. 

as you all sway to the past

and the future

in limbo

on the

train.

tonight too soon.

I knew it was going to be hard

the day has just come too quickly. 

where I sit in the echo of the last hug

the wake of the conversation

we had 

full 

of all kinds of 

goodbyes.

so badly the urge to 

shove the emptiness away

simply pick up the phone and make a call

I will regret 

made of words and feelings from past versions of myself. 

it is as Lamott says

"butt in chair. shitty first draft."

and as much as tears are on the precipice, the laugh overcomes it. 

for this too is temporary. 

I am learning.

this is most of life. 

love surrounds,

including 

the future.

tonight is just right. 

so over this.

if i leave something 

I know

for something 

I want

but don't 

know 

exists

it makes me feel, toes curled over the lip of the board, staring into my own reflection 

hesitating

that I don't fully want to live. 

that I would rather wait til I am forced off or pushed in. 

but I am so over this,

waiting for...the rest of my life. 

it is within me. 

I jump. 

human

what if

we could all be just

a little bit better

at

being human 

?

what if

i just spent a moment

every day

being a

better human

?

what if

being human

was seen as

positive over

the negative

so often associated

with the thought

?

we are SO powerful. 

 

i can be much better,

to better humanity.

healing what you needed to hear.

sometimes you just need to hear a strong, comforting voice say

"IT'S OK, YOU- YOU'RE DOING THE BEST YOU CAN!! 

you're trying! 

you're engaging with life- with hard situations, with the twists and turns you encounter.  

and you're climbing 

up and over 

the obstacles and weaving in the learning. 

you're doing a good job at figuring out how to love. 

that's what matters. 

you're in the thick of it, and it's gonna be ok."

and sometimes you just have to say it to

yourself, 

she says, 

crying as she types. 

realizing what she needed to hear.

healing,

from a strong, comforting voice. 

her own.

new day

just before midnight the clock strikes new and another moment

the one right before the end

is born. 

full of opportunity and grace and hope 

that the day will not set with you stuck in it. 

just before morning the sun prepares to share it's glory

with the world

one more time and you see

in the grey

the moment born new

full of promise and openness and life

in the eyes of all who eagerly anticipate the

sun's arrival. 

just before the moment you loose hope. 

you have one more moment to regain 

your footing. 

your spirit.

 

the clock strikes. 

the sun rises.

new day again. 

thanks be to god.  

Still.

I miss you

More than I would think was possible

From our

Brief

Time

Together. 

I miss you

Still

And the moments it hits me

Raw

And bus crying is where your memories find me and my broken heart. 

Oh Simon, maybe my grief will push your healing

And I can once again experience a light like you brought into my life. 

Until then, I will probably miss you just as badly. 

This hole in a heart newly affected. 

If you could figure out

Why you're crying would it then justify?

If you could reason your emotions into the ground 

Would it by default make decisions for others as well?

If you could argue for the change you're embarking on in the darkness

Would the groves of the answers be lit for your eyes searching?

If you could make the past disappear 

Would you be who you are?

None of these are a solve. None of these enough to stop you from trying. 

Trying in the first place. 

The turnout is not the ambition after all, it seems. 

Education in living richly- to love!

Middle of the path

Wheelbarrows churn down into the groves

A path they know well

No surprises

At least they know they're in control of their burdens.

The road stretches before them

When

All of a sudden

Flowers!

Pop right up in front of the wheel. 

Screech to a halt 

Investigate 

Find delight, multiplicity and compliment

Waiting just inside the bunch.

Wheelbarrows squeak on again

This time, their attention on the flowers

Riding home. 

Rewards

When you are your very best and
The birds still
Squawk and chide
"It's not familiar enough! You're too hard for me to swallow whole! I can't digest you!"
Always choppy always complaining.
Those birds they judge from their perches
Even below you, in vulnerable places.

But no
they think they are the ones who have it
figured out, who know what they need
and that it's you
who is doing it wrong.
The birdseed scattered all around them
just waiting
to be
snatched up!but those blinders. They can't see
The bounty in opening up their world
To different
To beauty in dissimilar world views
To a seed of a thought of an action
That is bigger than what they know
Now.
Those birds,
They are everywhere. All kinds of people never knowing they're
Not only blind to beauty and newness
But missing
Out.

Connected again

As if my left arm was disconnected
To my shoulder
To my rib cage and subsequently
My heart.
It is back.
I am all back
Because this restoration of
Grace space and listening
Has given it room
to bloom
again.

As if I couldn't breathe fully before, or choose how to spend my time
Waiting for someone else to tell me
"Go ahead!", because they said so.

And as if that wasn't enough, after all these 29 years
I find out I do have what it takes
And I am enough
I am strong, alone in proclaiming
'I will stand up for me.'
Sometimes you have company but mostly not
And that beauty begets life to the fullest
Seems just when you don't
need
someone else, or fear a decision
Is when
you have all you
need
to give.

When my hands are swinging by my sides is just the right time, to be fully whole. And someone else wants to grab onto that train?
Well they better tell the conductor, because it's 'bout to leave your station.
Action, my friend!
Ain't for the weak hearted.

Map me

All these lines on my map
The writing so tiny from here
I can't quite see
What it
Says.
The shape so familiar, and home all over it
Memories etched that float to surface when I pause to think of
Car on pavement zipping
Windows down
Hair blowing
Music surrounding
Without and within
The Open Road!
It calls with abandon and I will quickly
Abandon whatever it is pattern has deemed more important than adventure.

For life awaits! It has been and I have tasted and the dots all over this map have been discovered to show me
More
Of myself
And the future unfolds with each smoothing of a crinkle
And my eyes they remember things they thirst to experience again and
My fingers can't contain their desire
To tap tap tap on a wheel
As I am held captive by these beautiful lands once more and
show my world
to the world
and learn that I know
nothing
Again.

Because the road is the map and the journey the ride
And my soul wants it all.
Here I am.

Made like god, like god we rise.

tell yourself

When the rain light ends
And the fresh damp earth
Smiles back at you from below
And everything is singing their best
The umbrellas go down and the deep breaths go in and I tuck my hand in yours
For a swing and a squeeze.

When the day terrors stop spinning gold
And you know the choice is yours and sleep is rest instead of escape
You know the beauty can reside.
It can stay
Not just inside where you know it has been hiding in the corner behind that large rock
Hoping it won't be found because when it does
You will be truly lost
To your heart's captor
And as much as you want it you fear it just the same.
Not because you know it.
Because you don't.

Let me go, beauty. I will make you beauty again. Let me go, doubt.
I won't ever doubt again.

Your love is life and life is beauty and beauty is tangled with pain and pain with love.
Tell yourself,
You Are.

choke it out

I am the garden
You the grasses
.
I flourish in temperate conditions
While you mow yourself down frequently.
And I know this love of ours will get choked out
By your selfishness
And my creation of an imaginary land
Where we
Are not the bird and the fish.
We thought we were at home.
But where would we live?

grief

It pulls you like a knife across an unwilling participant.
It pushes you in the middle of a song you used to embrace.
It makes you want to dance and march and parade around all your feelings
til you have none at all.
Or at least about that.
Because focus is better than that. It will take the place
Of where your joy used to sit
And hop
And hope
And highlight your moments of floating into the ceiling at the drop of a few hefty words, spoken just to you.

Disembodied, you feel, and angry and sad and all the sunflowers are not in the fields you ride by everyday. But the way that you see yourself is bigger and you're happy, true, whole.
By
yourself.

You are who you were created to be!
And don't you ever forget it.
This grief is a thing very real, very deep, and you are deep enough for it.
Pull up those bootstraps and put on your favorite scarf because it's going to be a lot of cold hard work
inside
Before you get to where you're going.

Sunflowers and dirt
trailing behind
and before.

Prison

It's easy for you to escape
While I'm trapped in these memories of us
I come home to my door
Solitary, a dark apartment waiting for me
Instead of the times I came home to a light on and you hiding behind the door
Waiting to kiss me hello.
It's easy for you to escape to a place I have never existed
While I am here in all the things we did.
The bus stops. The grocery. The people. The rooms. The comforter rustle.
It all reminds me of you and I am trapped
A prisoner to my own memories
Of my past future
With you.

Now all I have to hear me cry are the two clocks ticking in staccato
They mark the time moving without us
With just me
And I miss you so much.
This part just seems cruel.

strapped in.

you and I we swirl around this track I hope
will take us back
to the beauty whence we came.
but this time like
last time
and before
this war
I am the responder only
taking numbers like a punched phone
operator behind friendly fire
who never lets one ring by.
without a nod and a smile of
encouragement
at getting run over
and she signed up for this
her civic duty because if she can't fight
well at least she can answer phones.

they ring so painfully and at first she hopes there will be more
she can do, more to give and
support and throw herself into, anything to avoid the silence of her heart
when the ringing stops
don't stop please
when it stops
the ring of nothing
fills the space and expands the ties
and she comes undone.
because taking the calls is better than fighting the war.

but this once
she picks up a silent phone
and
dials.
it's the same roller coaster, I just strapped in this time.

run out

if only I could run out
of tears
maybe this pain would run out
too.

wringing my breath like my hands
before a test
this test of my
heart
strings
the frustration and helplessness
strings before me
and behind.
miles
and I want it to
run out.
if it can end so can this pain

'be strong melissa'
I whisper through the gasps
for breath as the
noises squeak out of me
like the involuntary love
beating around the anger.
because I can't stop it
at all
and I don't want to loose you and me
and I don't know how to stop from loosing you
when I already have you now.

run away from the old, and into the new
waiting for you
to say no to the emptiness
and
yes to the full
arms waiting for your
aching spirit.

run out.
these tears.

heady

sitting
around watching these flames
smolder and flash me by
consuming themselves and starting again
and again.

our words stand up for what we
believe
scotch and cigars hiding behind
our truths
timeless and our grandchildren will have these moments
I can only hope.

life is too short to spend it doing something you don't love, we conclude as the dirt hits the mound,
and joins pieces of our souls shattered and shared
trying new things and for heavens sake they are all new.
none of us knows
how what we are doing will turn
out
or into the best move of our history.

because all these aromas so rich, pulling with a river of hope so heady
we can't stop ourselves.
life is not for the lonely,
life demands to be met head on with all the gusto and guts we've got.

let it loose!
I am going to live so big!

we are enough.

I am trying not to let this get all out of control.

HUUUUUGE PICTURE
everything feeds into my every
waking
moment
and I am responsible for changing lives(!!!!!!!.)


tame that voice down a
little bit
and whisper it the truth:
life is brevity.

and we are all doing
the best we can to be
ourselves.
and that is good enough.
it is always enough.

all my dreams

when i think of your smile
the way your lips crinkle your cheeks and your
eyes get that serious mischief each time you see me.
the way your words climb the roots of my heart and twirl upward
into my dreams and float down on my upturned hands
waiting for yours to fill them.

when i think of you, my love, when i am not thinking of you
your shoulders creep into the corners of my future
and my back longs for your chest behind it.
when i dream of nothing i always see you there,
playing a character i didn't know was you until the end
right before i woke up
back here
in my bed.
at home.
with you from so far away.

but always, you are all my dreams.