why is the sun red?
is it tired?
concealed?
angry?
is it dying?
Tag: poem
sure of the tide
These waters
Pull at me
Lap at my hips
I learned to swim
In the roughest weather
So here
I am
Breathing in
Sure of myself
Sure of the tide
That always takes me
To you
we are the subject, not the object
I was.
I wanted.
I came.
I remember.
I felt.
I wanted.
I needed.
I conducted.
I made.
I wanted.
I knew.
I lived.
I was afraid.
I was listening.
I wanted to be free.
I came across myself many times over.
I remembered.
I felt myself forgetting.
I wanted to be good.
I needed everything.
I conducted ceremonies.
I climbed up, even as I dreaded falling off.
I made myself jump.
I wanted wholeness.
I knew I would always be leaving a version of myself behind.
I lived anyway.
evolving
I say
through saying, I die a little
through dying, I grow a little broader
are you?
are you heavy?
or is that just my own weight I feel
in my forehead?
are you bright?
or is that my own light I see
in your eyes?
you are perfect
well not perfect,
or grand,
you are beautiful,
as beautiful as the word
can allow for – or not beautiful
but calm,
peaceful:
you make peace in me
these are all stories
These are all stories we tell ourselves. All of it. The heartbreak. The childhood. The identities. The things we’re good at, the things we lose, the places we find joy, all of it. All stories. Every last drop is a story we tell ourselves.
Except the body. The body speaks only in memory. In song. Except the body, which cannot lie. There are no tales to weave here. Only an unraveling of what is already whole and perfect and older than we can imagine. These are all stories we tell ourselves, except the body.
the first year
The first year that I cut down all the dead kudzu, putting a tarp down to stop the new growth.
The first year that all of our plants are on shelves.
The first year that we only have one plaid couch.
The first year that we have a real living room that I can read in.
The first year that I reread Peter and the Starcatchers and realized that even that book has dangerous patriarchal and misogynist imagery in it.
The first year that I feel capable of living.
this is how it’s supposed to be
this is how it’s supposed to be.
life is not meant to be easy
it is not meant to have obvious meaning
or to satisfy some colossal curiosity.
Life was never meant to be simple.
Nature isn’t simple.
Humans aren’t simple.
we are here
we exist
even that statement contains
infinite complexity
ordered chaos
disappointments.
this is how it’s supposed to be.
just a small question
are we just walking
our bodies around the block
to prove we exist?
nothing is ours at all
there’s something in the way we
catch at words,
gently tucking them away
into the softest parts of ourselves.
it’s not The Truth
(that so quickly dissolves into
chaos, obeying entropy
over our ornery need for absolutes)
it’s not Comfort
(a myth that seems to
float
always just
out of reach)
it’s more the clinging, quiet
moment in which each of us discovers
how small we are
or, rather, it’s the thousands
of tiny, breathing moments in which
we remember, all of a sudden,
for a fleeting inhalation,
that nothing is ours at all
or, rather, the visceral
stirrings that belong only to us.
we have taken in more than we can bear.
we have held floods.
we have failed to protect ourselves.
we have asked for too much.
this is not a salve, but rather
a snag in the balance,
when the world can’t help
but stop and listen.
Siena Rose 