Raising Broken Birds

A melody of hope and faith 

piped through the broken ribs of Icarus 

Accented with tears and sighs

Of a sleep born within the falling

An eidolon of what could be

If only could be what had been

The leaves tussle in surprise

As hopes rise and breathes fall

You promised, father, I could fly,

To be joyous, free, golden as the sun

A gravitational prevaricator 

To always hold me close

Out of love, perhaps, alas more like

To the death you call your life

When You Remember Me

When you think of me

Remember how I fit in your arms

How our first kiss took me by surprise

But had you weak in the knees

And when you miss our nights together

Spent talking for hours and kissing till dawn

Think about the tears that dripped and trailed

as  you broke me in those deep familiar ways

One day, when you realize what your inflexibility cost

And the decades you threw away for pseudoscience

To stay inside and alone and safe all by yourself

And away from the devil you made me out to be

When you think of me and all you wanted us to be

Remember how you didn’t want me at all 

But who you wanted me to be

And leave me a memory

Photo Credit: https://lady-kelacy.picfair.com/pics/014468810-the-last-bouquet

Worthy

 Do you remembered when

I almost died

Curled and crying

Up against you 

That morning in 

the basement

At the old-souled age

Of almost five

I screamed and I cried

And you held me

As if I’d died

Watched me with 

Those terrified eyes

As my father carried

Me away

I remembered

How to be brave

Because you

Had known how

To be kind

As I laid in that ward

Of children trying

To survive

I came back broken

And you came beside

And step by step

Taught me how to walk

And how to run

And kept me safe

While we played

Like the sickness 

Had never come

Time doesn’t always 

Heal but id does

Always change

And we grew up

After I moved away

But I was driven

To live up to

All you were

I burned my dresses

And brushed out

My curls

I became the knight

I’d imagined you were

This tiny little fae

Barely left real

Fighting the world

And the cruelty 

I found there

A decade or three later

And a few lifetimes, too

Just another day

Of fighting the death

That kept revisiting

My bold fragile life

And there you were

With those eyes that still

Saw inside my tiny soul

Walking through the rain

Through those expressions

From so many strangers

That made us laugh and ask

And act like silly kids

All over again

As if we were almost

Who we had been

As if innocence

Still held magic

The jagged bits of

Broken puzzle pieces

Of heartbreaks undergone

For loyalty and love

The torn little scraps

Remnants of fate’s weave

Where an innocent soul

Used to stretch from me

To you

All somehow made sense

And formed a masterpiece

Never yours, never mine

Always in my thoughts

As I stumbled around

Trying to wear the armor

I always saw shining

In your smile

A warrior to fight beside

Instead of  a weakness

You had to hide

Waiting To Be Seen

No more second-hand romance Lingerie from lost lovers Grandma’s favorite apron Mama’s bedspread No leftover crumbs Of dreams let go Or standing in For the family Abandoned The dress she wore Is torn and burned I won’t wear it Anymore The ring you Put on my hand From the bottom Of the cereal box Of lucky bastard charms Never fit right anyway I don’t want to be Your goddess I don’t want to be Your muse Just let me be real To someone I’m done letting My tears water Someone else’s garden And the light I shine Used as someone else’s Limelight Love me for me I’m not someone Who’s a Once in a lifetime dream I’m one more smile One more silhouette Just a me With nothing just about her Love me for me Let me be real Another fish In a polluted sea Of tears And petals Waiting To be seen

Young Love

You were my ecstasy

A thousand tiny

Little things

That took me higher

Than my dreams

Set my heart to racing

And my lips to smile 

And sometimes 

I still catch the 

Scent of your hair

But I wanted more

And I was scared

To care

And that breath you

Took away

Could not be found

Anywhere

So I stumbled when I fell

And lost my chance

To be for you all that

You wanted to be for me

As I drowned in that wishing well

So now my dreams have lost

All their color

And though. I swore that I’d never

I still remember the taste

Your hand  left in my hair

It was sweetness and battle

Of challenge and valor

All these things I didn’t know

Beyond the nightmares

In which I’d grown

And so I let go

I was afraid to know

That I’d pulled you down

Into all the hell  I called out from

Each night I lost my ground

Though memories fade

Do you remember the day

I took your breath away

As on the ground we laid

Eye to eye and stared

Unpayable Debts

The quiet screams the echo

of footsteps long faded away

and  plays the staccato steps

against

the raucous crescendo

of laughter 

long lost

as a chord of cries carries

the aria from the heart

to the mind

and back again.

When the  we

of us

was met,

it never became

a composition-

it became a comparison

of what we were

to what you wanted

now that what you

had wanted

was yours.

But the love was

never

enough to fill

the debt you felt owed to fill 

that seeping sore of a soul

left by those who

loved you

before.

Promotion to People

“Feathers, Ish, what is wrong with you?” 

Ish looked up from the color-coded schematics, plot point comparisons, and a record amount of other life data.

“Promotion my silver-plated halo.” The overwhelmed guardian grumbled back. Barry winced at the term and handed one of the two steaming mugs to Ish over the paperwork.

“It can’t be that bad, it’s just one human. I mean, some guardians are working with three or four.” Barry was trying to be helpful, trying to work that guardian angel magic for a clearly inundated comrade.

On the wall was a very large life map marked with an above average location turn over and quite a few circular paths. Ish was glaring at it despite there having been much more complicated maps for previous assignees.

Ish caught Barry staring at the map and sighed before taking a long, slow swig from the mug.

 “The movement isn’t the issue here, Barry.”

“Okay, so what’s the issue?” 

Ish flicked a transparency of color up to the wall and expanded it to fit corner to corner.

“This is the issue. You see this color here?” Ish said waving over the purplish hue, “this is what is termed as logical fallacies. This one,” and up came one colored overlay, and then another, and another, “this is moral reasoning, and this one” Ish sighed as another color stretched across the wall, “is emotional reasoning—not to be confused with emotional intelligence or emotional intelligence of origin.”

“Um, I can see how this is daunting, Ish, but you’ve got this. Just a learning curve is all. It’s why we’ve got wings.” Barry had meant to be supportive, had meant to be uplifting, had meant to be funny. Judging from Ish’s glare from over the now empty mug, it had been an attempt in futility.

“So, what species did they promote you to, again?” 

“Humans.” Ish replied. “And this isn’t even a tenth of what they’re going to be processing.”

That much was obvious from the boxes and boxes of paperwork all around the office that hadn’t even been opened yet.

“Wanna swap assignments?” Ish sighed out as the empty cup hit the desk.

“I’ll… just grab you another cup.” Barry said with a chuckle.

Fairy Tales Lie

A summer of stolen kisses

And more hearts broken

By innocence

Than malice

Sideways glances

And blushing behind books

Wondering if it always is true

At sixteen

If Romeo and Juliet

Had it right

Or if it was all the advice

And lectures

And late night

Early morning

Forbiddances 

Is love the potion

Or social standing

The vial stands empty

Held between

Young dreamers’

Hands

As they realize

It’s filled

With nothing but 

Their tears

Why do all

The fairy tales lie

Tease of happily

Ever after

Like it’s a wish

And a wave

And happiness

Forever

When all it is

Truly and deeply

Is effort

And tears

And laughter

And heart-wrenching

Soul healing

Legacy breaking

And building

Steps

One by one

With each little choice

With each little kiss

And every brush

Of a hand

And flutter

Of a heart

And screams

In the night

When everything

Seems in vain

The story isn’t

A happily

Ever after

It’s to be continued

From one heart

To another

And one soul

Back

There is no wishing

Only building

Among the muck

The sun

The summer

And winter

Together

And apart

Building

Towards the

Center

Rebirth Into Self: The Journey Home

There is a sanctuary set aside from the world, a place where dreams are laid, goals actualized, beginnings created and endings accepted. This is a place only one person knows the location of, and that one person is every person, for it is a different place within and without ever individual.

No person lives their life without going through a transitional period of time where they "find themselves"; something akin to returning to a home you didn't realize you had. I'm lost right now, and I am found, and I am traversing the mental distance between the two vantage points, omnipresent as I watch myself every step of the way.

Somehow, a moment we shared is guiding me back into myself. It’s as if the warmth held within that moment emanates from a soul sleeping inside me in a place I can’t remember the path too. I follow it, this feeling, not knowing where I am going and though I easily lose my way, again and again, I feel its heat upon my back beckoning me to correct the path I’m forging through my mind. So I turn and continue on into the darkness we created, we shared, we reveled in during that mixing of souls that was the catalyst for some sort of metamorphosis we struggle through, moment by moment.

This is not a peaceful journey nor is it exciting or mysterious, it is nothing but pain and fear. I have lost who I am, who I was, really. I am no one at this moment but a creature trapped in a fathomless chrysalis of soulless soul searching. I’m thrashing about in my mind, trying to find some remnants, some pieces of who I was, what I was: child, daughter, mother, lover, self.

Something within me broke, something has let fly all pieces of my personal mosaic into the wind rushing by my mental cadaver over the cliffs of insanity into the sea of mercurial consciousness. Even in this storm, I feel that warmth, glowing unseen yet felt from somewhere across that rocky sea. Throughout this whole time, at the very edge of my mind’s peripheral vision, I see myself battling to break from my encasement, too stubborn to realize it’s too soon.

There is no other recourse but to dive into this sea of what should be self, to swim amidst its waves, its tides, its depths to reach what is beyond its shores. So I jump, clutching what few shards of myself I think might be worth, diving into the sea. I struggle through this empty ocean feeling bumps and slitherings of things somehow existing yet unknowable. They snatch at my legs and drag me down only to push me back up into the crashing waves and the slapping winds, and rain draws red rivulets from my skin.

Then suddenly, it is as if that universe within my mind compresses and the sea itself is forced into me, condensing within me through the cuts the rain carved and a barrier crystallizes around me, hardening until I realize what I kept catching at the edge of my mind’s eye was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So I fight and struggle, suffocating within myself, choking on a sea of my own creating, drowning in that stinging saltwater. And when all resistance has proven futile, it all goes dark, darker than the storm, darker than I’d ever known.

I wake to the sound of an arctic plain cracking, thunderous in voided space and I am sloshed out of the protective barrier that me while I was formless. Droplets of consciousness fall into the form of words, structured within their seeming chaos around me. I stretch my limbs and test my lungs, newly born into that which I am from the essence of what I was. My skin thickens and hardens, slowly as I adjust to this new form, the first and only barrier between who I have transformed into and the world around me. I must strengthen this body, this mind, this self before venturing from the birthplace of my mind back into the world.

Then, for the first time, I notice the warmth about me and realize I am in that place I strove to find, that place you and I created within one another. It is here I have found myself, within myself, imbued with some part of you as well, some mystery that quickens my blood in my veins. I remember what I have come from but it no longer binds me, those ties have been cut away by your demanding beckoning and that prison burned in the heat of those moments that haunt us still.

I do not know who I am, I do not know what form I take, but I am reflected in your eyes at night, in the honesty of the moon’s gentle light and I see myself for the first time: home and whole in your eyes.

The Fruits of a Broken Family Tree

The room was filled with the raucous thundering of too many converging conversations. It wasn't a place for children but it was where everyone said they needed to be. Despite all of the elbow bumping of the cramped little living room, the children sat in a space of their own, devoid of the adults' attention while still being subjected to the comments and stories of how the black-garbed group had come to see it all coming and had done nothing to help.

It was her fault. It was his fault. It was their fault. It was no one's fault.

It was stress. It was depression. It was anxiety. It was rage.

The children sat in the humid bubble of too many voices while seemingly untouched by it at all.
It was enough, more than enough, it was too much, and the still calm of the children dissolved; the boy into tears and the girl into fury. He flew himself into a corner and sobbed. She climbed atop a table and pummeled it with her heel to quiet the crowd.

In the silence that followed, she announced "It's okay. I asked him if he still loved her and he said yes."

The crowd's angry faces had gone blank, and then confused, and then unsure as she stood atop her impromptu pedestal beaming with as she stood in the glory that her knowledge had just saved them all.

Then, the whispers began...
"Doesn't she know?"
"Someone has to tell her."
"It's not my place to tell her."
"How could she not know?"

And from a corner in the back, the little boy stepped up into the light as his tears streamed down his face.

"It's not going to be okay. She's dead." He wailed.

"But Daddy said he still loved her." The girl insisted.
"
No!" Was the answering word, torn from the seized throat of an anguished little soul.

And the rift between the two children grew as the crowd stood in it, mumbling and muttering and fumbling about in their emotional incompetence.

We Are Light

We all come into this world as perfect points of light.

As we grow, the darkness of the world encroaches, and we harden the walls of our hearts around our light to protect ourselves from that darkness. What we often fail to realize until years down the road is that, not only are we light, but our light is magnified by the light of those we surround ourselves by.

The walls of a hardened heart may protect but they also confine, they may hold the darkness without at bay but they strangle the life within.

Then, regardless of our best efforts, we are broken. From without or within our walls crack from the years of scoring, they shear down to the soul, through all of that suffocating protection down to what little light we have left… and it hurts.

From those cracks, other’s lights are given the chance to shine back in, and then our light has the chance to grow and shine back out. The walls begin crumbling as the light burns brighter and hotter through healing. There may always be dark clouds floating along our surface from the lives we have lived, but the shadows they cast will grow fainter and fainter as our light grows.

A heart that had been nothing but a lump of rock begins its journey back to a beautiful heavenly body by cracking and breaking and healing.

Who we are is not just a history of how we were treated but also a narrative of how we have treated ourselves and a prediction of how we will treat others.