The Blue of Blood

My heart is wet and on it’s surface I can close to my thoughts. I sit on my hands with no sudden movements. It will rain soon and the sky will gently kiss all we know. An overwhelming pouring out of love. Someone you love (or don’t love) will eventually kiss your mouth full and carry you through the sea. But even then. Even then. Your blood is blue. Warm and blue imbued with flakes of silver light. With the sea beating against my body, impressing my consciousness through the memory of skin, muscles and nerves. 

Rules for a Body coming out of Water

I can feel myself emerging from this. For a moment I was stagnant, but I can feel myself moving through. Closing my eyes, I urge myself to remember — Anything. Something. Nothing. Beyond outside of me, I was here before. It is all contingent upon the myths we decide to believe. Repetitions move through the mind with ease — Is it cold when you’re dreaming? Is it cold when you’re under? How can you open, more? Open more. Unfold your arms and unclench your jaw. Feel your heart beat against your chest as it’s own living breathing being sitting inside of you. Watch where your heart goes when it’s submerged in water. Do not strip your skin from this depth. The inhale walks the exhale home. In the waves our bodies break so we can come up for air; come to the surface. Contract to expand. Dive deep deep deep down, to stay beneath. To lay down into the blue as a final embrace, seems like an awfully beautiful way to go.

Monologue II: Self-Examination

I can see part of myself dissolve and slip and seperate, while the other half eases into the arms of inquisition upon the value of self. For a moment, I see myself. It’s enough to be alive and watch the sun dissolve. It’s enough to be. To listen to the humming. At the heart of everything. I rearrange myself until I am on my hands and knees dripping within the nectar of self-preservation. I do my work with this body that grips to intentions in order to move beyond the burning. The transformation of a wound into fertile ground. Do you feel held? Where do you go when it becomes too much? Can you feel it? Where do you leave it when you lay down to sleep? Softly. Silently. Slowly.

Beyond all — Love is real. Take that and eat it. 

SHADOWS OF THE SOUL
The Philosophy of Intimacy
A collection of short essays published for JANE. by the Grey Attic magazine

I came to love myself in defiance, out of desperation, because there was nothing else. Because there was nothing left. No sun in the palm of my hand kissing me with its mouth. I had to listen. I was forced to listen. To give myself backbone. To allow myself to be (for the sake of my own survival); if your hand shakes it shakes, if your pulse trembles let it tremble. You cannot follow your intuition if you drown it out with thought. Open your life, open your hands, open the movements of your body. You are a malleable structure made flesh blood bone and whole. This heart made to burn up, burn in, burn out. The body continues beyond shadow: beside, under, above, from. An embrace that is both internal and external. Do not break away, do not break. Apart. In pieces, by piece. To peel apart the collage of my skin with teeth of my own. Teeth that strip you back from yourself, make you over into something else. Give me the release of a bloodbath. Some souls burn forever, and some have never seen fire.

Essential reminder: Unclench your teeth.

FROM THE CORE
The Philosophy of Intimacy
A collection of short essays published for JANE. by the Grey Attic magazine

I harvest strength upon strength, hold equal measures of grace and vulgarity in the language that falls from my lips as a woman. I fold into myself as a gentle days end. My body is small. I remain in the heart. The allowing of water to spread tenderly over the bones. To tend to those bones. To tend to my wounds. To tend to the skin of it all. Watch where it comes from, watch where it goes—speak it into my mouth and slide it through my veins. Dripping unseen outside of myself. Dig into the corners of my marrow and discover the fire, the vigour, that which enables me to make love and bring what is disembodied into form. Into existence. Stand in the sea of it raining down. Find your way back. If you’ve lost that, you’ve lost everything.

WATCH WHERE THE HEART GOES
The Philosophy of Intimacy
A collection of short essays published for JANE. by the Grey Attic magazine

I get this feeling suddenly. It moves through my blood often. But I’m not sure there’s one word for it. An inner dialogue in watching my heart vanish into all that it loves. In seeing where it goes when drowning in silence. Held under water. An experiment in self-discovery. A willingness to unfold (time and time and time again).

Is this my life? Do I hold it in both hands? How do I swallow air? My hands are strong but my heart breaks over stubbornness. Over gentle self-inquiry. Somehow, searching for something else. A desperate inability to harness tenderness. Do not harden. Softly softly softly is the only way to go. Softly like the gesture of touch upon your cheekbones from the man you love before he eats you. In light of love, I pull my body closer to self. Your voice is sincere. Your voice is honest. Your hands have made some good mistakes. And they will make more. I no longer gather what falls.

I’ve had these thoughts almost everywhere I’ve ever been in my life. There’s nothing you can do but drink some water, take yourself down to a sea of blue, and hope that it subsides. Or you can leave.

fin

On breathing under water

Go deep within. Down
down
down
Deep, deep, deep.
This is how you swim inward
This is how you float outward
Beneath these depths I am reminded of the grace of reticence,
the power of discretion, of being completely private and autonomous
yet profoundly aware of and receptive to the world.
I soak my heart in salt
drag my bones towards the quiet light
I am dissolved
not dismembered;
A shiver of pleasure into the inside.

Stay Soft

You can carry as much weight in quiet, in resting gently as you can in noise and distortion. Silence is kind. It all comes down to a rawness and depth in emotion. The ability to carry and hold presence. To movements through not knowing all the answers and maintaining bravery through a tender collapse and reconstruct. Fall upon new truths that run down from the top of your head and out from the heart; nurture them (inside) softly. Don’t look away. Look straight at everything. Look it all in the eye. Be terrified, but open your arms. 

A note to Self

Intimate moments of the heart in a rising sun. Drinking from this one vast, oceanic light.
I have realised this week that deep down I still hold a sense of fear around being seen, fully.
Taking the time to remember who I am, where I am and where I would love to be. Though I am very much in love right here, right now. Very much immersed in the heaven I am nourished by currently and the sincere love that surrounds. Still, allowing for what is moving through me, to move through me.
A scent that lingers with ease as each sun wakes. A never ending finding of flow; constant reminders not to (entirely) bottle up conversations with the inner self. To navigate through the ability to understand something instinctively without the need for conscious reasoning.
Finding all multifaceted parts of me, through what is not me.  

To show up (for self) and communicate my sentiments in clarity, while suspending preconceptions of my own self. Especially on the heavy days. The sweet shadows — Sometimes it is hard to see the light, when you’re on your knees. But nothing disappears until it has taught us what we need to know. So rather than fighting, I observe and play witness.
Unafraid of the depths, grateful for the peaks.
There is knowledge of years through deep rooted self work in soothing and knowing how to reduce friction, give comfort, and holding these limbs when they undergo growing pains. To pour several types of love into my own at every corner. In seeing the value of intentional rest and dropping into a parasympathetic state. That doing isn’t always in alignment with productivity. Movement begets breath. Meditation begets mental stillness. An uncomfortable conversation begets clarity.
To support myself how I support my loved ones. 

Fragile tender Life body

Before all things
fold
and gold away
Before the sky
turns to midnight silk
and hiding
Spill me as sunburnt honey
upon your tongue
Overflow gently 
Make residual light out of me
Spread me
heavenly
in silences
and soft fires
Rest through me
Your red heart
fragile tender
fragile tender life body.

Tenderness

And I can soft kiss
the tenderness
of your neck
breathe my sun
upon the tip
of your ear
and I can
slit your throat
with language
falling from between
my lips.

Reverie

I have dreamt of you
in places
that I have not seen before
sung into
every lung
full of air
with warm smoke
tearing through liquid light
finger tips upon
smouldering amber
and hidden rivers
sun slipping between
barriers
of inner melt
to keep
to carry
to posses.

Smoke

Let your heart be touched
and burn
burn everything that you are not.

Come closer

In the evening hour
my hands were covered
in midnight honey
pipe tobacco
and silken threads
unravelling
dripping
in solitary fire
in flickering thoughts
of offering myself up to you
but I would rather
pass through silence
alone
and breathing
just for this night
dear one
so I float
in and out
of reveries
and reflections
and you wait
I know you wait
while I rejoice
in the burnt land
as I break every inch
of this blood
moving hips through
the vast heat
of desert plains
so when I am washed
clean
of all that rattles
in my body
when I have exploded
the truth
of myself
through this journey
of skeletal zones
when my bones
crack and shiver
tenderly
I will lay
a kiss in the palm of your hand
for all that went unspoken
so you understand
how I
pour inside of you.

Soundless

There is a light
that burns
swollen
in soundless hours
slipping onto
welcoming skin
I birth these flames
across bloodlines
the same way
the sun swells
piercing the surface
of ocean
vastness
I spill
in the
unfolding.
 

Melt

There are times
my eyes grow
heavy
under fragile sky
in reverent silence
in howling
thunder
in divine fire
these flames
draped
from inside
the
blazing
of
my
hips
soft water falls
lips
to my veins
pulsing
upon ground
standing naked
in dreams
rising
and slowly
drinking
from
muted light
I unfold
where all is eternal
and language
is swallowed
in
fire.

Over the bones

Bleed
weave the blood back together
carry the sun
within the gold lining
of your palms.