Speak your piece/peace…Im listening

Beautiful... I missed the days when you just wrote like this...honestly I love you more now, because I feel your struggle, your honesty, your truth in this piece. It doesn’t matter whether you are in love or not, or that you feel we cannot relate. This piece makes us relate It is the way you put words on paper, that causes people to listen. I feel the love in this poem and I want you to be happy. [written in response to Hiding]
--- Your Biggest Fan

Oh my.  You don’t know how good this makes me feel.  I’ve missed myself lately.  And word on the street is that a few people are worried about the things my writings are describing.  Well, I didn’t share this with you folks yet, but I gave up giving a f.ck for Lent.  I know that sounds crazy but hear me out.  I spent a lot of my time handing my emotions out like they were flyers to a club.  Now, even with that, I don’t show or even entertain my emotions as most as other folks I know, but still, it was a lot for me.  I was unhappy with myself, with my gift, with my career (or lack thereof), with my parenting and with my close relationships.  I should explain that better, so let me get comfortable.  I was unhappy with myself for feelings things I thought I wasn’t allowed to feel.  I was loving someone I didn’t think I was good enough for.  I had too much baggage for him.  I was too flirtatious for his liking.  I was too accessible to be considered his girlfriend.  I was too angry to be kind sometimes, too aloof to be conscious.  So I was mad at myself for deliberately asking for a specific type of man and then not knowing what to do with him when he showed up on my doorstep.  Then I was mad with my writing.  It’s such a vast sea to swim in.  There’s so many thoughts, secrets and lives writing affects.  Here I was, finally willing to share all the things that I had learned and then I had to worry about violating someone else’s privacy, I had to consider someone else’s feelings.  I had to dig deep into the skill of writing to create enough imagery that people wouldn’t be attracted to the gossip, but rather engulfed by the message.  I had to consider the feelings of the very men and women who had no regard for mine.  My writing was legitimately calling on a higher power.  Then I was especially pissed at my career.  How can I manage to merge my life, my education and my bills to create a career that I love and also loves me back.  There was responsible and there was crazy.  Being a writer requires a lot of both.  What else was I mad at?  Oh my parenting.  My kid is amazing and no I’m not saying that because she’s mine.  She is truly an amazing spirit.  People always stop me and say, it’s like she’s been here before and I know this to be true.  My little girl has wisdom for blood, but she eats entirely too much sugar, she’s usually late for her bedtime and I don’t get to spend as much time with her as I like.  These things wear on a parent’s soul.  Things like that sometimes make us feel insufficient, incompetent and just overall not good enough.  It’s not every day but even if these thoughts float through your brain one day a month, it’s enough to beat yourself up for.  Last but certainly not least, my close relationships were trying me.  I had to call on God because I was sure to send some of these people back to their maker.  Then I felt like God wasn’t hearing me so I looked to Buddhism.  I was searching outside of myself for things that were too “mine” to have come from anyone else.  And when it comes to close relationships, it’s hard to get a third party opinion to help you with them.  People are biased, people love you too hard, some people don’t love you enough and, above all, you can’t betray the other person’s journey by betraying the privacy of it.  There are so many rules to being righteous.  Even with the best intent, we know the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  So let’s just say, there’s a few reasons I strayed from my usual genre of writing and leaned more towards the inner turmoil.  This is not to say that I don’t feel happiness and sadness simultaneously sometimes.  I feel extreme sadness when I can’t share my happiness with you.  It’s almost like I’m cheating you from some great lessons that your journey will offer you. But I believe there will come a day, when I can tell you everything and be loved anyway, it’s just no time soon.

It’s not exactly that I don’t feel you all can’t relate to happiness because I see many of you falling in love, liking people, dating, finding your own path, etc.  In fact, I can see that some of you are happy to be righthere [which I’m forever indebted to you for].  I see happiness in a lot of you but even that makes me question if my gift is still as poignant and resounding when it’s coming from a happy place.  Look at Adele – a classic record and six grammys (what is the plural version of that word? Does anybody know?) out of heartbreak.  I’m writing a book inspired by the heartbreak.  But I’m slowly learning that the inspiration and the ending don’t necessarily have to be the same thing.  And that’s what I’ve gotten from Lent this year, taking on the responsibility of not giving a f.ck has given me the ability to feel monumental things.  I literally removed anger out of my life.  I heard things that made me ‘feel’ angry but I learned to ‘feel’ that and move through it in the same breath.  I left anger at the foot of the cross.  I did not react in anger.  I was able to make more room for happiness and more room for love.  I was able to experience a momentous love, a “bone crushing, forgive all things, get angry for you” type of love.  I found enough space to be empty and enough room to die just to let someone resurrect me again.  Funny how that happened during Lent.  Either way, I’m on my way back to you, ready to relate, ready to love, and ready to be open to happiness.  And whether I fall in love or not, I’ve always been in love with the likes of you.  That is why, no matter what I say or how I say it, we relate anyway.  I love you.  Thank you for missing me.  Sometimes, I don’t notice when I’ve left.

Hiding

What if I told you I was happy?  What if I told you that I found the man of my dreams and my fear of disappointing y’all led me to disappointing him far more often?  :taps computer screen: Yes I’m talking to you.  I’ll be honest, I’m not typically a happy person.  I have a happy personality such that I’m smiling 98% of the time but true happiness, the kind that comes your favorite dish waiting for you when you get home, is not something I exhale naturally.  I don’t often tell people what truly makes me happy. 

Did you know that dogs bury what’s most important to them?  Without realizing of course, that buried items often die and wither away with time, losing their color and the shine reaching for the sun beneath the dirt.  That’s what happened to my relationship.  I kept it hidden in the deepest parts of me like it was a secret among my ribs.  I almost felt guilty for loving someone that much.  I felt guilty for even being loved.  I felt like I was cheating on all of the heartbreak, the disappointment and the betrayal that I had written to you.  But I don’t blame you because it’s hard to tell when I’m smiling from the inside when I’m usually always smiling.  It’s hard to tell when I fall in love because I never tell what happens in between.  It’s like we talk, he’s cool, I love him.  I don’t generally disclose the secret hideaways and the breakfasts in bed.  I don’t talk about the forehead kisses or the interlocked fingers, the dinners made with love and the showers where two shadows collide.  I don’t naturally talk about the back breaking, the loud laughter, the swollen breasts, the broad back and the messy hair.  I don’t often preach the interlude of my own love.  But for most people, the moment between two songs where one ends and the other begins, feels like the music has been stopped.  How come no one ever told you that breath is music? The pause is the breath, the inhale, the exhale, the ‘let me take a moment just so you jot this down into your flesh, appropriately marked with “I was here.”’  I cherish the pauses.  I keep the secrets. I bury the happiness sometimes just so I know where to look for it when I need to go back there.  When the music stops, it doesn’t stop at all, it’s just demanding that you listen closer that you stop moving and hear the pulse, that you respect when the heart beats and you don’t mark it dead when it takes a moment to gather itself.

What if I told y’all I was happy?  And that heartbreak, betrayal and disappointment were foreign things that I never found in his bed.  What if I told you that happiness is not always just a smile?  That maybe my happiness was getting out of bed in the morning or maybe it was showing up to a job I hated because I knew that once I got off, I was headed to his house?  What if my happiness was the little things that you take for granted every day, so much so that even when you read my day to day life, you miss it anyway? 

What if I was happy and I gave it all up just to relate to you more, to love with you again, to cry with you in peace, to hold you in the dark?  What if I sacrificed my happiness with my angel to be amongst humans again?

Bye...

It sounds like I miss you when my sheets rub against each other

Interrupting the conversation between my bare legs wondering what's missing between them…

Wondering when brown became so void, so vague, so empty

I couldn't think of another word that began with "v" except for virgin 

which is still technically the same thing as empty

considering you can have something to 'lose' while still not ever 'having' something

Either way, my legs miss you 

and maybe that's why I keep walking back to you 

Hoping you'll have something for me 

Something that looks like love but feels like a deported cousin

that feels like you're sad that they're gone but at least they get to be back home

I have stop feeling like there's home in your bones

I have to stop feeling like you got away with murder without realizing I'm the one who died

I have to stop feeling like, love, and madness for you

I had hoped that by the time I reached this door, it would be the front door to our house

with a white picket fence and a dishwasher like I had always hoped

But instead it is just a door that I've been crying behind hoping you never reached for the handle because it's burning there

because there's a fire here

There's smoke here

and there's ashes that sit where I have crumbled

I wish I could stop loving you

Stop missing you 

Stop kissing you 

But muscle memory is real and every time I see your teeth, my tongue just wants to say hello

I should know better to know that I know nothing at all

And some things just aren't you, but when those things aren't for me, then there's no us

I wish my brown legs wouldn't need you as a place to rest

I burned many a calorie with you in between them

Lost everything but weight though

Lost years but not inches

And fooled myself into believing that my wetness had nothing to do with my tears

Even my vagina was crying

Like women often do when intruders are near

And you kept telling me that my flesh was pink

Baby, I'm brown, she was just blushing when you were near

the blood was just rushing when you were near

the flood was just gushing when you were near

How dare I drown in my own waters?

Loving you moved me, sometimes into dizziness

But leaving you kept me still...

Mailbox full

I left a message for God last night

On the wings of a dove with feathers so white, my blackness wore itself like a scarlet letter

It read, dear God,

I see him wherever I go

In music notes of songs written in the charcoal veins of Etta James

In mirrors along my bedroom walls

In the bottom of my morning coffee

And in the footprints of staggering children on their way to school

I wonder, why you would bring me to love and leave me there

Weeping at the foot of its cross?

Wondering whose wings I can borrow to take me away from here

Why guardian angels don’t grace the battlefield called love

And why he can’t stand the very sight of me but lying down, he seemed to enjoy it

God, tell me something

Why is it that you loved Mary enough to breed your son and yet you caused her the most pain?

Why would you give her something and then take it away from her in pieces of parables and miracles as if the legacy was enough to console her?

As if memories where strong enough or wide enough to hold her?

As if the trinity wasn’t supposed to include her?

I feel washed away Lord

Like rubble underneath his feet

Like a valentine’s day card from kindergarten collecting dust on his mother’s fridge

Like meaningless phrases such as ‘boys will be boys’ but what about the men boys were intended to be?

I feel like he quit on me Lord

As if the devil made a better offer

But who listens to anyone who left heaven just to win an argument?

Clearly, their wings were never made of gold

Their breath never smelled of myrrh

And their hair didn’t curl like the lips of the moon

I feel like he quit on me Lord when he walked past me this morning

And I ain’t never ask a man to be righteous without respect

Can I say I’m perfect?

No, I’m more of the Magdalene than the Mary but I try

I pray with his name coming from my lips like smoke to let you know there’s a fire here

There’s virtue here

And whatever doubt I fostered, I attempt to bury it with the dirt of my own skin and the fingers of my own sacrifice

It’s not my love I want a favor for

It’s my humility

I just want to know Lord, if I leave myself in your mailbox, will you check me?

Bridges

the funny thing is that you never know you're on a bridge until you look down.

Young mothers...

Public service announcement...


Young mothers...


I love you all.  I believe that you are diamonds. Nothing, I repeat, NOTHING CAN BREAK YOU.  Someone should have told you that motherhood was never intended to be easy.  And someone should have told you that the baby might be the easiest part.  Someone should have told you that you will question every single decision you make and you're supposed to.  Someone should have told you that you may not be able to lift luggage into your trunk but if need be, you will lift a truck off of your child.  Someone should have told you that your strength is immeasurable even though, most of the time you will feel weak.  Someone should have told you that no age, no religion, no economic class can hinder you from being the best mother you can be to your own child.


Someone should have told you all of these things but sometimes, nobody does.


There will be days that you just want to run away. Your feet may swell, your breasts may leak, your hair will definitely be a wreck, your partner may leave, and you will forget to shower.  In the midst of all of these things, you will survive.  There will be days that you lock yourselves in the bathroom for five minutes just to cry with little fists banging on the door.  There will be days where you want to throw yourself out the window.  There will be days that the word "mommy" is the last thing you want to hear. There will be many days like this.  But you cannot run away.  You cannot hide.  You cannot walk away from your own destiny.  You will not leave your child in this world by his or herself.  That's not what mothers do.  That's not what you will do.  


Your friends will go on vacations, have boyfriends and party until the sun comes up.  You will too one day, just not today.  Today, your job is to vacation in your child's smile, to relax in their cheeks and to run away in the sound of their voice.  I promise you, there is no greater peace on this Earth than to hold your own child in your arms.  


It may seem that this is strange coming from me, considering I went back to school while my grandmother raised my three month old child.  I will tell you that I partied until the sun came up, I loved a man or two and I went on more vacations than I should have.  I will also tell you that my hair fell out, that I couldn't sleep for months because I thought I was hearing her cry, that sometimes I couldn't call her because hearing my baby without smelling her was something my mind could not comprehend.  I will also tell you that I felt empty and partied to feel whole again, I loved to feel like a woman again, I cried the guilt out of myself.  I will tell you that sometimes I resent my degrees because sometimes I feel more like a student than a mother.  To be honest with you, your struggles will be a double edged sword.  You will have to choose the lesser of two evils.  You will be put on display for others to critique, discuss and even degrade.  Sometimes, people will forget that a mother and a woman can sometimes be two different people.


But I urge you to remember that you are setting an example, not only for your child but for women who will one day become mothers.  You will be a mother of grace, compassion, limitless strength, dedication and most of all love.  You will be the template for every mother that joins your journey.  You will never be perfect, you will stumble, you will lose your temper and you will damn near lose your mind but you, my dear will never lose focus.  You were given the ability to change the world with the gift of a child.  I want you to know that no matter how hard it is, no matter how alone you feel, your purpose will always be bigger than your doubt.


Every single day you walk with your heart outside of your body. You are the ONLY person WHO can survive with such a big piece of you in the arms of this world instead of your own.  You are stronger than you can ever imagine, but nobody told you that.  Nobody told you that you can carry a cross for a lifetime.  Nobody told you that  giving birth is the most dangerous thing the human body can do but YOU did it and YOU survived it.  Nobody told you that some friends were never meant to be godmothers?  Nobody told you that people will let you make a bad decision just so they can talk about you later? I'm telling you.  As you believe that your child is the greatest gift you've ever received, also believe that you are a gift to your child.


Young mothers, the whole world watches you, some of them waiting for you to fail.  Some of them are waiting for the opportunity to say that you should have never had that baby because the burden is too big for you.  I'm telling you, don't worry about the whole world watching, just never forget that your child is too.


From my journey to yours with an abundance of love
A young mother...