Tag: writing

all this will be ruins

Siena Rose1 Comment

All this will be ruins someday. The earth re-membering herself, re-calling her own Name. All this will be ruins someday. The bright red METRO MATTRESS DISCOUNT SLEEP SUPERSTORE sign will crack and sink into the soft forgiveness of the mud. Every Grande styrofoam cup will slowly settle beneath the dirt, snap into pieces, become one with bulging roots and galaxies of mycelium. There will be no plastic left, only vivid tangles of roots. Swelling. Sighing. It will all be ruins.

All this will be ruins someday. Every desperate, pavement-sodden parking lot will cry out in relief as burbling streams find their way through the concrete, saplings shove themselves up between tiny crevices, and grass sprouts up, along the perimeter, now in the middle, now in every possible direction. It will all be ruins.

All this will be ruins someday. Ruin, from the Latin word “ruere,” meaning “to fall violently,” turning into an Old English word meaning “act of giving way” and the Italian word “rovina,” meaning “to knock down, tear out, or dig up.” Ruins. What a relief to release the burden of progress and productivity. It will all be ruins.

All this will be ruins someday. A re-in-statement of the natural order of things. A letting-go of the chokehold we have on the world, this dangerous and exhausting myth of control. A digging up of all that we have imposed on Her. All this will be ruins someday.

May that day come sooner, rather than later.

nobody is abandoned

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It’s like feeling a flood of desire, sudden, without the usual bristling or wincing. The sky is the new blue gazing out of a baby’s face, not yet fully formed, inevitable. Everything – that burst of breeze, this unfurling leaf – feels just out of place enough so it feels like I have landed in an alien world. The grasses with their tiny white flowers. The insistent wind. The expectant, sweet air. The mothering of it all, the singing.

We sit in the warm grass and fall back, arms outstretched, letting the earth inhabit our bodies, hair tangled in the green grass, hours-old bugs flying inches from our noses.

And the sun. The Sun. Nobody is abandoned. We are swaddled in the sun. We are newborns. We are suppliants to the sun. We are on our death beds, smiling.

what am I learning to love?

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Love. How this word eats away at us. How we long for the definition, some clarity, something to land in. Is it too cruel to say that landing in love is a myth? Learning to love, on the other hand, is the entirety of it. So, as I answer this question, I will be contemplating love in its entirety, in all the dark, damp layers of it. I’m learning to love the routine of folding laundry slowly over the course of the weekend. I’m learning to love the feeling of grief when another tiny seedling dies for no apparent reason. I’m learning to love the click of cheap shades against the windowsill, as the spring wind laps at the side of our house. I’m learning to love the revision process for each blog post I write for all the small business owners looking for SEO bolstering. I’m learning to love the feeling of collapsing into bed after a day of frayed nerves and lingering hugs. I’m learning to love chopping vegetables for strange stews while my fiancé practices snare drum etudes in the studio. I’m learning to love growing herbs on the windowsill. I’m learning to love saying hi to people on their porches as I walk past. I’m learning to love being financially stable for the first time in my independent adult life. I’m learning to love my fiancé’s stubbornness in the face of change. I’m learning to love my self-judgement. I’m learning to love the possibility of rest and rejuvenation. I’m learning to love the rain again. I’m learning to love uncertainty, of not knowing, of not fully understanding. I’m learning to love those moments when I cannot hold myself up for crying so much. I’m learning to love my integrity. I’m learning to love saying no to things I cannot or do not want to take on. I’m learning to love the place where “humanness” and “nature” touch noses and swirl into one another.

these are all stories

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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.

how tempting it is

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How tempting it is to build a monument to our pain, a towering monolith of trauma, a permanent tattoo of our losses. “Look,” we call, “look at how you have ravaged my soul. Look at my body in tatters.” How we forget that we are already building the most powerful monument: the story of how we have gathered ourselves up again, yawning piece by yawning piece, warming our bodies around a new, infallible belief in ourselves, expanding as our disfigured mouths grow pink and taut with healing. “We are here,” we call, “we are here, whether you see us or not.”

starting the day with Rumi

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I want to start the day off with Rumi. Everything else feels intrusive. Just the fact that I can write this sentence, sitting at the grooved wooden desk upstairs, reflecting on desire, is a miracle.

an evening visit

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I wouldn’t have thought to sit outside, with the air as cool as it was. This must be why we keep friends, I thought, so we’re not just doing what we always do, in the way we always do it. I wouldn’t have considered the blankets, and the warmth of the dogs, and the feeling of fresh air filling my lungs. It was my friend’s porch. Across town was my house, where we’ve experienced two drive-by shootings on our street, multiple stolen car chases, and a flat-out murder in our front yard, in which the wounded man stumbled down our driveway, finally collapsing and dying in our backyard by the lilac bush, where my partner found his body minutes later. Often, as I stand on our front porch drinking coffee, men will stop to inquire if I have a boyfriend, and if I work out, as if that is their business, as if I am inviting them to ask, just by existing on my own front porch in the morning. Across town, being outside has felt less relief, more risk. Outside, we’re at the whims of the natural order of things, but with guns. But here, in my friend’s neighborhood, where there hasn’t been a wayward gun shot for years, we took our blankets out to the back porch as the sun set in the evening. The light was a cool blue, sky still bright against the swallows and bats that flew eastward, mysteriously only flying in this one direction. We posited that maybe it was actually only one bat, flying in circles, just to confuse us. But this was simply a silly story made up to amuse ourselves as we sat there. We talked about the crops we were planting (zucchini, fruit trees, tomatoes) and what time of year was best to plant seeds. We talked about the work we were doing on our houses. We talked about how healing from trauma is non-linear, but how processing it seems to alleviate symptoms. We sat in silence a lot of the time. We talked to the dogs. We breathed in the air. Our nervous systems relaxed after each of our separate, scattered and stressful days. We watched the light die and noted how the longer days had somehow brought life back into our bodies. We talked about cycles. I wouldn’t have thought to sit outside, but I wouldn’t want it any other way.

nothing is ours at all

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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.

No, this is how it is

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This is how it is: the morning hour, when, alone, I walk barefoot to the bathroom to face myself again. This is how it is: slipping into the small, eastern room to let the oblivious sun envelop me before it fades.
This is how it is: the heavy head tilting towards the kitchen steam, battling shame.
This is how it is: war, when surrender would make for better company.
This is how it is: the hour when, precious and alone, I am not Woman, or Worker, or Teacher, or Separate.
This is how it is: the hour, when, seemingly alone, all I expect of myself is everything.
This is how it is: an intentional prolonging, stretching the illusion of solitude.
No, this is how it is.