I still pray for it:
To become the butterfly
promised in the books of my youth.
I’m beginning to suspect
they lied.
Inspired by the word prompt: transformation
Crysalis Dreams
Destiny
Home
This real sense of
Being deeply inside
My actual life
(Inchoate as it may be)
Astounds and grounds me
I’ve longed for this
For so long
I may as well
Be living in Paradise
Rest Area
It’s a long haul
The distance from
Young adulthood to
Middle age
I’m leaving my baggage on the side of the road
No need to take it any further
Time to lighten my load
Head out again, open and free
No looking back, just good memories to hold
Legacy
I feel you there
All the hearts of those before me
Your dreams are in mine
Or are my dreams echoes
Of what you imagined for yourselves
I want to be what you could not be
Do what you could not
Live more fully
More freely
Give those who’ll follow me
Dreams less encrusted
With the pain of the past
Create a new narrative
Of True Love and Joy
Give the future a love that will last
Hand-Me-Down Dreams
I take a deep breath
Connect to all who’ve been before
Feel my mother’s mother’s heartbeat in mine
What I yearn for
I don’t always understand
Whose dreams am I living
Are they of the present or the past
Ride of a Lifetime
One minute we were laughing. Young, hungover, late to the Superbowl party, totally free. Driving down a country road on New Year’s Day, we were heading towards our lives.
Must have hit a patch of black ice. Time stretched itself out like a taffy-pull. The car air filled with heartbeats and breath.
None us made a sound. Even the car, as it spun 360 degrees, was silent, seeming almost to hover above the ground.
I was in the back seat, on the hump between the seats. It felt like I was on the Teacups ride, facing the slow-whirling, hard-packed, icy snowland and barbed-wire fence as we spun. Katie’s red hair seemed to defy gravity, and you seemed set in plaster, both hands on the wheel.
It was surreal, those decades we turned together. Something transpired between us, unspoken, that would forever connect us.
When the car stopped, no one moved. The stillness seemed even more surreal than the spinning world, then, and I wasn’t sure if we’d died and this was heaven, or if somehow, miraculously, we had escaped what would surely have been a horrific and fatal crash.
More eons passed, until finally, as if on cue, we started laughing. Unbelievably, the car was even facing the right direction. We had literally completed a full two circles, and had stayed on the road.
We were whole. We were spared by the Angels.
We went on to the party, but didn’t tell anyone what had happened. Didn’t make into yet another college drinking story.
In fact, we never spoke of it again.
Stone Portal
I cannot focus, the dark is too thick
Just hear loud, indecipherable sounds
I’m lost and can’t find my way
Overbearing, foreign smells fill my nostrils
Earth, feces, sweat and fear
My own heartbeat and jagged breath
I feel the air in front of my body
Searching for a soft place to hide
I stumble, hurled through darkness
Falling a mile, aging a year, before I land
Sharp pain, hard crags of cool stone, my head explodes
I want to just lay down
Something warm oozes from my mouth
A bed of stony rock seems a fitting cradle
To pass me through to the other side
Date with Destiny
I knew.
Before it happened, I could feel it.
It almost didn’t happen.
If I hadn’t been on just that road at just that time.
His car passing my overheated one as I sat in it, seemed so…miraculous.
I’d not seen another car for at least an hour.
After realizing I ‘d no cell service, I’d kind of lost it. Then I calmed myself down, surrendering to the dawning reality that I was not going to make it to my friend’s wedding on time.
The fact that he stopped seemed so…amazing.
And he seemed so…genuine. (And kind of cute.)
Hope leapt into my chest like a butterfly. I could still make it!
I grabbed my bag and climbed into the passenger seat of his rather nondescript, conservative car. I took a deep breath in and thanked him again, settling in for the ride.
That’s when I felt it, as I looked down and checked that my cell was in its side pocket in my purse. The visceral dread in my gut.
I don’t know what changed, why suddenly everything that seemed so right suddenly felt so wrong.
But as I heard the car door locks click to “locked,” I knew I’d made a mistake.
And just as I looked up and felt the blade of a knife plunge into my waist, into the place where I feel most vulnerable, where it is a scary mix of ticklish fear to be touched, I saw that he knew that I knew I’d made a terrible mistake.
And as I left my body and watched what he did to my body from above, it all seemed so very, very…clear, and so very, very…inevitable.
Pathfinder
Perhaps my way’s not been graceful
I’ve done my best, and that’s not for nothing
At times I’ve lurched or been wasteful
But it’s been my way, and that is something
That Man Behind the Curtain
So what? So what if I am not up to “par?” What if I am “substandard?”
What the hell does that even really mean?
When I dissect the judgements I have revolved my life around, it is as if I pulled the curtain back to reveal the sweaty, little man who is the voice of the Great Wizard of Oz.
“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”
There is a Them I have made into a kind of God.
Others against whom I have constantly measured my worth, my performance, my right to be here.
Others who often know no better than what they’ve been taught to believe by the Them that they also believed was The Great Oz.
I’ve pulled the curtain back, and I see what I have been buying into.
It is time to ask different questions. Instead of “What’s wrong with me?” “What can’t I be more like that?” I now ask:
“Less than” …less than what?
“Unworthy of” …as decided by whom?
“Inferior” …to who’s idea of superior?
The standard. Who’s standard? Who sets the standard? The industry? Who is that exactly?
What if in trying too hard to live up to The Standard I overlook or even destroy something that could be truly extraordinary?
Pardon my French, but it has all been one big mind fuck if you ask me.
Well, the fuck stops here.
I belong where I say I belong.
I determine my own value.
I’ve been using the wrong gauge.
I’ve been using the wrong measuring stick, and I’ve been measuring myself against the wrong things. Random ideas I either imagine or have had impressed upon me by others.
No more.
I have another gauge within, one that runs truer than any other, and just like Dorothy’s power to go home again ended up being with her all along, it has been with me all along.
It is my own heart. It is my own unique blend of desire, creativity, will, love, joy, bliss, determination, work, craft and passion.
I belong because I am. And I am. Worthy.
There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.
Life On The Skinny Branches 