thru the darkness

this time around i have decided

that even through the darkness

                                                    i will dream.

yes right now my body is gloop

& my brain on fire yes

yes it hurts so bad to be alive

again i am here

again i will return

but that means i get to leave

i do not need to live here among the slime & shame

i get to leave behind everything i want to leave.

i get to build. a life. i get to make new things.

i have gotten better at the darkness.

i will keep getting better at the darkness.

and in the future i will have a little house.

a garden. a black stone pond with lilies snaking thru

the darkness, and the lilypads fragile islands for frogs.

an art studio filled with light. a loft. a balcony with chairs.

every corner mine, created in love with the world.

in the future i will be safe, and my very own.

perhaps one day i will even mother another,

soon as i master how to mother this unruly self.

in the future i will make. i will move thru darkness

as i do today. i will make & think & read & write.

i will eat elaborate meals with ghee & herbs.

i will have company that holds my heart kindly.

i will go for long walks in beautiful places,

& forget all the times i forgot how to live.

this is it, this is this life. what else to do but move

thru. what else to do but make what you want

to exist. every part of it, year on year. let it go

when it gets old. there is so much more to let go

in this life than there is to hold on to. lightness

is the only truth, both infinitely tender and harsh.

you do not need to carry this heavy & dark. meet it,

and shed it, let it pass thru you into rivers & seas.

you are simply a vessel, light as air. what do you own,

but the ability to hold, the ability to drop, the sense

of a story about it all? the ability to make. this breath

& how it fumbles with me thru the darkness, despite.

this body & the space it still has for respite.

spring in the tropics

new moon & the first day of spring:

i missed it. i am still deep in snow,

heaviness is still calling my name.

i haven't yet seen the new sliver in sky,

have craned my head on my scooter

and seen only the stars among the trees.

somewhere, spring calls forth everything

that was buried in ice, allows death

to unfold upon the earth. fertilizer for all

the new beauty yet to come. and here,

there's only flowers on every streetside,

no fists of snow, no undersides of ice. 

december is blue skies and the beach.

january, even bluer. what a life.

and april, the cruellest month, is yet

to arrive. breeding/ lilacs out of the dead ground,

mixing/ memory and desire, stirring/ dull roots

with spring rain. even here, where the ground

wasn't dead: something did die. everywhere

something dies, a moment ends. everything

that ever happened is added to the endless pile:

memory. and even if we mix desire to this

trembling material, what will we manage to make?

perhaps newness, this time. perhaps tonight

i'll see it, the moon, still fresh from its nights

in the dark, scrubbed clean and barely ready

for another cycle, growing to fullness

and then falling away, becoming nothing,

losing everything. sliver so delicately

placed, such a tender little thing,

a fingernail hesitating on the back of a lover.

a lover, the night. springtime suffused 

with love, real love, the blooming

and the death, the tenderness

and wildness

of being alive. 

again and again,

cycle on cycle.

new moon & the first day of spring

a hundred times over,

and then something else.

goodbyeing

how odd that

every single life you build

out of air and water and what

once felt like love

will leave. this one too, 

the afternoon light fine-tuning a rosy orange

on your walls, the tang of morning yoghurt,

the jamun wrapped in newspaper a friend

brought you at a party. how your hair

falls to the sides and flaps in the wind

on your scooter. the majesty of coconut trees

on the way home, long leaf-fingers quivering.

someday, sooner or later, goodbye to all this.

not the first goodbye and not nearly the last.

i've said goodbye to more. to days that felt

more real than these. to ankles that tangled

with mine for months. i've said goodbye

to snow, goodbye to dust storms, goodbye

to my childhood. goodbye to the dreams 

too heavy to carry, even to some fears

i thought were woven into my bones.

turns out nothing is woven

into my bones, not even my unsturdy i.

someday, goodbye too to this body,

unpredictable and ashen, sometimes

glowing before dusk, sometimes giddy.

turns out i can carry nothing, not even

myself. how odd this life made only

of lightness. no point living unless

you open your heart-gates, let longing

stream into the world. love everything,

let it pile upon you. know it will

fall away, every last crumb. still you add

another card, another card, until an angle

makes everything crumble. again you build,

over all the years. get better at losing. a heart

that knows love is a heart that knows loss.

where else to go but onwards, confused

and empty and full and giddy and onwards.