The Rose
Once there was a little bud
sprouting out of the ground.
Fresh, and new.
to this beautiful world.
Soon, it reveals itself
into a glorious rose.
Every petal splashed
with deep crimson glows.
Even with her beauty,
The rose still feels lonely.
With no one but the grass
to dance along with the wind.
Suddenly, a guest arrives;
a busy bumble bee!
He greets the rose with joy
and proceeds to make honey.
The rose is estatic.
Every day, she eagerly awaits
for the arrival of the bees,
with hummingbirds and butterflies
whom she passes time with.
What a wonderful life,
with good friends
and the best views of the world,
the rose thought.
But one day, it all changed.
No bees came to visit her.
She was confused...
didn't they enjoy the pleasure?
Day after day,
no one arrived.
She called out to the wind
And started to cry.
The rose feels weaker now.
Her petals are losing colour
Now a pale red
She's under the weather.
All she could do was wait...
wait...
wait...
Her petals are wilting
It's almost the end.
She lets out a tear
Soon, she'll be dying.
Suddenly, a familiar voice
echoed in the silence.
She looked up and saw
Her old comrade.
"Hush now rose, don't cry,"
says the bumblebee.
"Look around you,
you've created many new lives."
The rose looks around
and she sees an amazing sight;
many small buds
popping into sight.
The rose thanks the bee
with one last smile
and heaves her final breath...
A few weeks later,
the field is painted
with hundreds of pretty roses
swaying in the wind.
And when the bees arrive
along with the hummingbirds
and butterflies,
they remember the rose
that started it all.
' New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.'
– Lao Tzu
beauty
You are gorgeous.
Gorgeous
/ˈɡôrjəs/
adjective
beautiful; very attractive; very pleasant.
I don’t know the meaning of beautiful
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder but
I don’t trust my own opinion on anything
And I don’t know what it means for someone to be conventionally beautiful.
All I know is that if you aren’t gorgeous
Then what is the point of the word?
I don’t know what this feeling is.
No that’s not right, I
Know how I feel about you but I
Don’t know what it means.
I know it in English and in heartbeats but not in the language of
Labels.
I know with all my heart that you are
Gorgeous
But I don’t know quite exactly why
Which beautiful thing tipped the scale this far.
Gorgeous.
Gorgeous
Gorge.
Gorge
/ɡôrj/
noun
“a narrow valley between hills or mountains, typically with steep rocky walls and a stream running through it.”
Hills or mountains with steep rocky walls
You have walls
Don’t you?
You hide them well
Because you let people through the place where they think the walls should be
But your walls aren’t there they’re
Somewhere else hiding
something else.
I don’t know what.
But I think you have them.
A narrow valley with a stream running through
Maybe.
Maybe you are something beautiful in someplace unexpected
Maybe I’m looking too hard for a metaphor or maybe
You are a stream of thoughts and personality
All contained in one narrow valley that is the small vessel of a human body.
Are you a stream
Contained in a narrow valley
Or are you an ocean
Uncontained
By the world?
Gorge
/ɡôrj/
noun
archaic
“the throat, the contents of the stomach.”
I don’t know about that one.
Gorge
/ɡôrj/
verb
“eat a large amount greedily; fill oneself with food.”
I could gorge myself on you
On this feeling
On your eye contact
Your touch.
I could gorge myself on this moment
No this one
This one
When you are still looking at me and
I am still looking at
you and
Here we both are
still.
Me
I am of
stardust and song lyrics
the things that make up me and the universe.
I am descended from
the rulers, the ancestors. The makers and creators.
I am
red stinging hands
dirty paintbrushes
graphite-stained fingertips
fresh clean notebook pages.
I am scream-singing and feet-tap-tapping along to music.
Pencil scritch-scratch-scribbling in the margins.
I am a part of the world that’s part of me that’s part of the world.
Together we are everything.
The Skin I Live In
I look in the mirror and think to myself
Whose body is this?
Everything I know about it I’ve learned from someone else
Age nine eating cherry popsicles in a purple two piece
My neighbor licks the syrup from her lips before declaring that my butt’s a bubble
She’d very much like to pop
And I look at my reflection in the sliding glass door
Having never considered the size or shape of it until this moment
Strange that the longer I stare, the larger it grows
Now I always take a picture from behind before I leave the house.
Age 10 “dating” a boy named Jamie with golden blonde hair shaped like a bowl
Passing notes covered in smiley faces with their tongues hanging out
Are you tired? Because you’ve been running through my mind all day.
Until recess when it turned out he was the one who was tired
Tired of me
He didn’t want a girl whose chest was flat
Like a commercial, he taught me I was missing something
Though I’d just given up on Santa Claus the year before
Age 11 taping cotton balls inside my JCPenney training bra
Age 14 sewing cups into my one-piece bathing suit
Age 16 sticking rubber chicken cutlets against my nipples
Now I always refuse help from the Victoria’s Secret ladies.
Age 20 breaking up with my first love
My body nearly disappears and yet
It receives more attention from men than ever
When I’m 105 it doesn’t seem to matter much if I’m dead inside
Because I’m warm to the touch
And the tight waist of my double zero jeans keeps my guts from spilling to the floor
I’m starving, but I swear it’s the lust that makes me dizzy
Age 21 eating a steady diet of Zoloft, cereal bars and gin buckets
I am brought back to life
With curves jumping from the page of my story like a pop-up book
I am soft flesh again
And my roommate says she’s happy for me but also
She likes going back to the way things were
See, I need to be the bigger one
Because there’s only room for one manic pixie dream girl at every basement party
So I make a photo collage of my before-and-after body
I am thin and dead then fat and alive
All on one poster board
I hide it underneath my bed and dream that I am a sinking anchor
Now my roommate and I don’t speak.
Age 25 percolating with possibilities, I’m a woman in the city after dark
A tall man acknowledges I am alive until we get to the bar
Where he finds a leggy blonde
Who laughs and bites him with unnaturally white teeth
I receive unsolicited advice from the tall man’s friend
A 24-year-old version of John Belushi
He puts his hands on my shoulders and spits in my ear
He’s never going to go for a girl like you!
The bass pounds through my chest
While he stares at me like I’m the last dog in the pound
The guy that looks like he’s from Animal House
So I make my way back to my apartment
My ugliness reflected in a hundred windows
Illuminated by the streetlights for the whole world to see
Now I know the question’s answer
My body is yours
And I just live there
Beneath its skin
Sweet Darling
"Darling! I don't have time for this! I am late!"
Sam pretends to give up on the hide and seek quest, and sinks down onto the couch. Listening closely, he hears a rustle of papers.
"Gotcha!" He whispers to himself.
He gets up slowly and walks over to the curtain. A bubbling giggle reaches his ears as he pulls the curtains away.
"I win. Now, give me my papers, Kim."
"But I was having so much fun!"
Sam scans over Kimberley's reddish hair, blue eyes, and pouting lips before noticing his jacket in her arms.
"I know, but I am in a big hurry. So," He pulls his jacket free from her clutch, "I will be going now, so that I can come home and catch up on the sleep that I lost last night."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning that I need you to be out of my apartment at four."
"Awwww!"
"I know, I am soooo cute." He takes the file from her hands.
"No, that was more like a disappointed awwwww."
"Bye, darlin'."
Sam strodes out of the door and closes it.
Searching for his ride, Sam walks around in the parking lot. A car comes around the corner and stops centimeters from him. Sam shakes his head and gets in on the passenger side.
"Where were you?" The man behind the wheel asks.
"Had some trouble with Kimmie, but I can actually ask you the same thing."
"Hmph. You really need to get rid of her, and then you would be happy, like me."
"John, you are not happy being alone."
John chuckles dryly before speeding the car out of the parking lot.
"Also, I have bought a ring for her."
The car is almost tipped over, but John somehow succeeds in getting it back on its wheels and keeping them on the road.
"YOU DID WHAT!?" John glances over to Sam and then back at the road.
"I did."
The car ride was silent with John concentrating on the road, and Sam thinking about what would be the best, and most original, way to propose. Finally, the car stops in front of a stylish building with big glass windows. John sighs.
"Another day in paradise." Sam smiles grimly.
Both of the men exit the car and starts towards the building. The front desk clerk recognizes them and greets them with a nod. The two nod back and continues to the elevator. Silence rules between the two until they are alone in the elevator.
"Have you checked to see what is in the files?" John inquires.
"No, it is none of my business as of now."
"Did she?"
"No, Kimmie was way too busy hiding."
"You can't just have your stuff lying around! This is big business."
"I know. Why do you think I didn't open the file?" Sam shoots John a glare of fire.
"Chill! Don't look like your about to kill me."
The elevator opens and the two exit. Back and forth yelling from behind a closed door fills the room, and the two immediately head towards it. Sam opens it and both enter silently.
"I DO NOT CARE! IF IT ISN'T DONE, THEN YOU MIGHT LOSE YOUR PARTNERSHIP IN THIS BUSINESS!" The man in a grey suit yells.
"BUT THE PERSON SEEMS TO BE HARMLESS, AND..." The man in a black jacket is interrupted by the other man.
"THE MAGIC WORD...SEEMS!"
The yelling stops and both men just glare at each other. Sam glances about the room. The man in black, Fred Thomson, is red from anger and is bulging his fists. The man in grey, Henry Jones, is standing behind his desk with is fists on his table and breathing deeply in order to calm himself. Fred suddenly turns to Sam.
"Hand me the file."
"Yes, boss."
Sam holds it out and the man grabs it. He flips through the papers and his face becomes redder the more he sees. Sam cannot see the papers, but John has the audacity to try and see what is inside.
"Sam?" Fred closes the file.
"Yes, sir?"
"Get rid of this person as our extremely considering partner wants it." He hands the file to him.
"Consider it done, sir."
It is almost midnight when Sam arrives in front of his apartment. He has walked the entire way and tried to think of a way that he can get out of his job, but nothing good has come to his mind. He can hear Kimberley's soft humming and it does not cheer him up as it usually does. Opening the door, he searches for her with his eyes.
"Hello?" Her voice is cautious, but kind.
"Kim?"
"Oh, Sam! You're back! Finally!" Kimmie comes racing around the corner while uttering these words.
Sam drops his jacket just in time to catch her.
"Kim! You cannot just jump into my arms!"
"You haven't failed to catch me yet!" She laughs heartily, but Sam only smiles. "What is wrong, Sam?"
"Work."
"Why don't you tell me more about your day?"
"Darling, I...I can't."
Kimberley looks at his face for awhile before kissing him softly.
"Sam, you can tell me..."
She collapses to the floor with the knife still in her back. Bending over, Sam takes out the file from his back pocket and places the picture next to her. Next, he takes out the ring box and opens it. After gazing at it for a few seconds, he puts the open box next to her as well. He stands up slowly and leaves the lifeless form to be found by the first person to pass by.
My Mind’s Library
It’s a funny thing, your mind. You have to search within it for your own memories, and even though they’re yours, you can’t always find what you’re looking for.
Sure, there are those that you can call forth readily, and if you’re lucky, they appear in vivid color. You can smell and taste them exactly as they were. Get lost in them, even.
Other times it takes a while, requiring the kind of serious concentration that calls for a quiet room and closed eyes. And when you finally discover them, it’s as if you’re seeing them through a dirty window or a black and white TV set with the volumed turned low. You’re outside, looking in.
Still, those are better than nothing at all - the moments seemingly lost to you forever. How maddening it is to know that while you’re the captain of your own mind, you can still fail miserably at navigating it. In fact, you might never come to know it fully, to be able to traverse it with ease, so the best you can do is try to map it out a little more each day. Maybe you come up with tricks to help you remember things, or find a method that puts you in just the right headspace to travel safely through the crevices of your brain, where your most precious memories are tucked away. How well you employ these tactics, however, can depend on a lot of things, like the quality of your therapist or a mastery of meditation.
As for me, I think my own mind less like a world to be traveled and more like a library. At one time, it existed with just a single card catalog drawer hundreds of miles long. And instead of being organized alphabetically, the catalog order was ever changing - determined by things like my mood, predispotions and afflictions. This often made my mind’s dewey decimal system far from intuitive.
Take the current task of recalling my most joyful memory. If I were asked to do this exercise in the past, the process and outcome would be much different from today. Years of struggling with anxiety (and sometimes its morose best friend, depression) arranged my card catolog in such a way that made remembering happy moments quite difficult, even though I’ve had many and know they are in there, somewhere. It’s just that they were woven so deeply, not only into my mind but into the very muscle fibers of my overworked heart, that they were hard to see.
Back then, if I were to look up the word “joy” in the catalog of my mind, I’d quickly pull a card with a typed message that would read something like this:
“Joy rhymes with Boy. See boys’ whose names begin with D, S, K and M, to start.”
I’d then head to the Romance section of my mind’s library, which looks exactly like Trinity College Library in Dublin, complete with grand rolling ladders to help you reach the books on the top shelves and regal stone busts at the end of each one. Though unlike Trinity, my busts are all of amazing women, like Joan of Arc and Marie Curie and Maya Angelou and bell hooks.
The bust in Romance is Jane Austen, of course, and the shelves are quite cluttered. But thanks to my card catalog, I’d easily find the boys’ worn books and flip through their pages, recalling all the times they’d hurt me - called me names or lied to me or made me feel small - which, as you might easily note, is the very opposite of joy. This would happen because my anxiety organized the drawer with all the wrong cards up front. They’d never help me find what I was really looking for, but were much easier to thumb through than the cards stuck far in the back. Those required time and strength to get to and often came with a high risk of paper cuts.
Those days, if I found my mind wandering in such a way, I’d simply close the drawer, take a deep breath and try again. This time, I’d try to start further back and would be sure to announce my request with authority - I AM LOOKING FOR MY MOST JOYFUL MEMORY - because, well, I’m also the librarian here. Then one card or another would wiggle free and stick up just above the rest so I could see which to pull. Usually, if this was my second or third try, the card would be a bit closer to what I was looking for, but almost always end up leading me astray once more. Sometimes the path became long and dark.
Card One: “A name that is close to Joy is Jay. And it was a fitting name, indeed. See entry for Jay.”
Card Two: “Jay had a lot of joy in his life, didn’t he? He was a good person to the core. See Book of Jay and supplementary volumes on Youth, Hope, Failure and Death.”
I’d pull the suggested works and turn their tattered pages with care.
“Jay was genuinely kind to everyone. He had so many friends and you were lucky to be one of them for so long. You could tell he was loved because the church at his funeral was packed. People filled the pews like bleachers at a rock concert; there was even standing room only in the back. How sad for your childhood friend to die so young, when he was so good and you are not. So much joy he gave to others, so much left in the world for him to have, if only he’d been able to stay. I wonder if I’m making the most of my life. What if I die tomorrow? Have I even done anything worth while? I haven’t written a book. Haven’t been published. What’s the point of me being here if I don’t leave anything behind? If I don’t change anything for the better? And what if I die alone?”
Simply searching for my own memories was a kind of torture until one day, I’d simply had enough. After years of going on like this, I decided that if I were to keep on living - and I mean really living - I needed to convert my catalog entries over to digital. I needed more guidance, more speed and less room for human error if I was going to be able to access the right books of my life when I needed them most, and maybe, it would even help me rewrite their endings or create sequels. However it worked, I just hoped for a better system. So eventually, I slammed the old card catalog drawer closed for the last time.
The transition was hard. I had to do most of the work myself. So I booked another therapist appointment. You see, I tried to talk to someone three times before, and each time they never worked out. I always stopped going after a couple of sessions. And I can’t say for sure if it was them or me - I wasn’t ready or they were quacks or maybe a little bit of both - but it made my final attempt all the more difficult. It was yet another time I was forced to be emotionally naked, to simply spill myself at the feet of a complete stranger in the hopes that I might finally gain clarity and get that upgraded filing system for my mind, once and for all.
The process was exhausting, embarrassing and uncomfortable, until it wasn’t. Until it was relief, freedom and a deep sense of knowing myself - so much so that now, not only can I easily see my brain’s connection to high speed Internet (a jack had been there all along, hidden behind the main circulation desk) but most days, I can plug right in and have nearly all my joyful memories shown to me in HD. When I say, “I AM LOOKING FOR MY MOST JOYFUL MEMORY,” it goes a little something more like this:
I look upon the vast shelves of the libary of my mind, when a single light shines upon a particular bust on the left side of the room. I make my way forward to see that the bust of St. Brigid is gleaming before me, as if she was donning a halo. And it’s then that I feel a sudden breeze move my hair. With a quickness, a thick book with gilded pages floats in the air before me. I raise my hands and it gently lays itself open in my waiting palms.
From its pages, I do not simply read words, but live them. My senses come alive, and the air smells of burning peat that warms the center of my body and radiates to my finger tips and toes. My spirit shines from the glow of it, and I hear fiddle and tin whistle and harp as they fill the room. Women sing in Gaelic, and I am reminded of my deep connection not just to nature, but to this land in particular. I’ve never seen grass so green, winding mountain roads so narrow, as I wander past fairy mounds and cheerful shaggy sheep. I never cared much for gray weather before, but the mist of rain on my face makes me cleansed and I am whole. How strange it is, to visit a place you’ve never been, and somehow feel like you are finally home. So much so, that you can’t help but cry. It is a reunion a long time coming.
This is Ireland to me.
I visit the places where my great grandparents once lived and rest under the trees where I hope they sat before me. I eat coddle in Glasnevin and somehow feel blissful walking through an ancient graveyard on a wet day. I climb steep steps to the top of St. Anne’s Church and ring the Shandon Bells loudly for the whole city of Cork to hear. I look down upon the colorful buildings that blanket the rolling hills and think that this must be what a rainbow looks like when it’s fallen to Earth.
I have my first pint of Guinness at 11 AM and it feels like velvet and tastes like heaven in a glass. I dine in a castle and meet sweet old women who can tell where I’m from just by the shade of my red hair. A local choral group sings Danny Boy and I weep gratefully. My husband and I make friends with an Irish couple who hear our American accents and buy us their favorite drinks. They take us to the pubs with the best craic, with snugs and fireplaces and trad music and dancing and so much laughter. We stay out until the wee hours and I still feel the warm hugs and cheek kisses from our new found friends as we wander dizzily down the street, toward our warm bed.
I spy fairy doors and lucky trinkets in the bramble as we make our way through the grounds that lead to Blarney Castle. We trek up steep stone steps once again and beyond all reason, I am delighted to have a stranger dangle me from my ankles on the roof as I lean backwards to kiss the Blarney Stone, slick with rain. It’s supposed to give you the gift of gab, and I pray that for me that it translates to the page.
My first visit to Ireland is and will always be one of the most joyful memories of my life. And now, I can easily relive it any time I like.
My mind is at ease, its library forever open to me.
Sunday Mornings
I am awake but I won’t get out of bed
My eyes half-lidded
I’m half-conscious in my head
Inside the comforter is warm
Outside the air is cool
I’m peaceful in my early morning room
The new daylight is soft and polite
Patiently waiting, slowly approaching
Greeting me gently under the guise of night
No need to rush to noon
I have time this morning
To terry longer in my cotton cocoon
