Follow your science,
if you will,
but allow room for the heart (to live).
It is not logical,
nor linear,
it cannot be confined
inside your empirically-designed
compartments and rules.

Prescribe you view,
if you will,
but allow room for the heart (to grow).
To be unbounded,
to be free,
to bring you all the limitless possibilities
of a life
made with love.

Everything is measured in distance from you.
There are moments,
even series of them,
that extend beyond breaths,
where the swell of the earth
overflows the ache,
but,
like the ocean,
inexorable,
it returns,
filling every crevice
with the absence of you.

Oceans are nothing
compared to this boundless expanse of sadness
you have gifted me.

I have a manifesto writtenthat I have not shared,
I have a heart still broken
that does not know how to forgive,
I have sadnesses waiting in the wings
that are not mine to heal,
yet the sun still reveals more beauty,
and the birds still sing in the face of thunder,
and my heart still knows how to love.
It is the weaving together of threads
that gives them strength.   

Oh!
the scars!
what a fine net they make!
to gather the stars!

This idea of me alone, comes from the same place of lack as this idea of me with someone else. 

I am always this iteration of self creating this self as it is, enacting this self as is with others. 

This self as me an individual. This self as oneness with others. 

Me. You. I. Us. 

Always. 

All-together. 

There is never a lack of Us. 

through all the interims,
the befores,
and afters,
and in-betweens,
I fill my heart with thoughts of you,
like arrangements of flowers
decorating the long stretches of
waiting spaces.
Bursts of roses and many-petaled tulips,
fragrant lilies and soft sage,
crisp pine and purpled mint,
creamy jasmine and sunrays of forsythia,
the silk of wisteria
floating overhead like dreams
from the arching trellis of my
longing.

softly,
as the moonflower unwinds on a silvery night,
forgiveness opens.

glancingly,
it was given,
the most hurtful words you’ve ever heard.

unexpectedly,
from a hidden chrysalis,
emerges a golden butterfly.

This latest adventure brought home again the fact that my idea of a “vacation” is laughably, vastly far off from most people’s. Multiple days with lack of sleep, skipped meals, extremes of cold and heat, untold amounts of dirt on and in everything, up before dawn more mornings than even I’d prefer, marathon vigils of wakefulness and prayer, language barriers, questionably dangerous situations…and mixed in with all of that…discovering the indescribable beauty in people and places you’ve never seen before, finding your physical limits and pushing past them, hilarious sessions of storytelling, the excitement of the unknown, heartwarming connection with strangers I can’t even speak to, finding a sense of home in a new place, the refreshing awareness of every moment that the foreign brings, strengthening bonds of friendship and community, and the exhilarating promise of future adventures. 

Happily, joyfully, gratefully, I wouldn’t have it any other way.  

ochre red earth painting the underbellies of clouds pink
reaches of cottonwood
sighing in the whispering wind
the gentle thunder of a kitten herd punctuating dreams
Jesse Woods crooning
lush stands of lilac
smelling of the soft springs of my childhood
tiny bubbles of fear floating up from the calm deep
I have never become accustomed to being looked at
with such thirst