The World Is Mine

Something imperceptible has shifted

like a stone lodged between two worlds

Shook loose with barely a sigh

I lost my way for awhile

but I am back where I belong

Every sound and syllable trembles with meaning

Words rearranging themselves for me

In an ever-changing dance

This is the end of an endless drought

The rain streams down my cheeks

I weep with joy

Throw my hands in the air

Everything is righting itself

and the world is mine again

Taking Time

I need a day of nothing, a reprieve from the spinning merry-go-round of my life. Shrug it off like an old winter coat and hang it by the door. I need a day where I am not asked, wanted, or noticed. To know there is a wall of silence between me and everything else.

Self-Control

I am rewriting this

to sound less

like a complaint

Lowering my voice

so I won’t be dismissed

I’ve long since learned

what I say is second

to how I say it

Learned to level

my voice, when I

am screaming

on the inside

This is what it is

to be a woman

To learn how to

swallow your pain

To know how

to bide your time

Tongue-Tied

I am a sentence strung together out of sequence, written for your tongue to untangle.

No Poet

There is no poet before me who is exactly as I am. No one will ever write the words I’ve written, think the thoughts I’ve thought. My poetry is a candle burning gently, an everlasting flame coaxing something tender, turning all toward love. So much of our world is drenched in anger. But love is our natural state of being. We may lose our way for awhile, but from love we have come and to love we will return.

In a World Like That

I don’t want to be in a relationship where I feel the constant need to explain myself. I don’t want to live in a world like that either.

War

Are you a man of peace? I ask you.

You will see one day there is no such thing. In the end, your noble ideals will fall victim to circumstance. Something in your life will reveal with all certainty the ugly truth of men.

And how it is only a question of time until, like every other man before you,

(you will see)

you will come face-to-face with that thing for which you will go to war.

The Path of a Writer

The path of a writer starts with an electric pulse, like a heartbeat. Barely perceptible and fragile as a newborn. Someone once told me writing is like panning for gold. But I think it is like stumbling on the ruins of a lost city, talking to its ghosts. Wandering its deserted streets with long-forgotten names.

One day you will find your city and you will build it with one painstaking word after another. Only then will you know the path of a writer. Know what it is truly like to inhabit a world you have created, and how this world that began as a heartbeat, becomes a living, breathing thing.