It is said that the story you tell yourself
is the most powerful story you will ever know or realize.
Memory is a beveled mirror, a prism, a shattered crystal.
Facets depend on refracted light, where the shards have scattered.
FACETS: Me UnBorn
Afloat, I am a fleshy fish in your waters. My world is liquid in light and motion. I grow. I swim. I wait. Made to wait. Practicing dance spins and running legs, I kick, float, listen. Talk to me. Now chambered alone, lullabied by idle chatter and a little tune.
Luminous swirls and bubbles are delightful, I’m delirious.
I bathe in your secrets and rhythm - whoever you are.
Eight weeks ahead of schedule, eager to leave, I pull you into myself. My face presses against your back, hard. I am thunderbolt ready. YOU have long been ready.
Crushing pressure pulses you, then me. Pause and breathe, here we go again, this caving-in pressure. Voices get louder. Our pain crescendos as you push me away with the anguish of a warrior.
I rush out to an icy reception. Cloistered and uncelebrated, we part ways. I should’ve been a Libra, but was born a Leo.
Out of the Depths
My father arose
from the sea
and struck me
with lightning
that I should glow
among the anemones
and seaweeds, then drift onto land.
Steaming amidst the mud and rock,
my mother of boiling hot lava
spewed me
from her volcanic crater.
I became basalt,
carved, curved, polished
on one surface only.
Plastic Savior
My nightstand shone Jesus green.
He and his lamb shepherded me into
phosphor dreams.
Their molded silhouette
laid me down to sleep.
Unaware of the girls, unwed
mothers, disowned and wrenched
from their beautiful bastards,
under the watch
of The Good Shepherd.
Umbilical
Tethered.
Bound as an infinity knot, a secret moored deep in her hold.
A stowaway, pressed on all sides
by water and salinity, grabs onto life.
Pulling north toward a steady star,
the vessel rocks and lulls with tides’ rise
The moon, Neptune’s master, keeps vigil
as the restless night gusts and gales.
Creaking, moaning undulations, Crack !
Her hull surges and gives way in a rush.
Her lodger is released, buoyed along a foreign shore.
Cast off.
MATRYOSHKA, a nesting dream
Flooded
milk’s in
but for no one
nothing sadder
An Aria Remembered
In one year, shaken by an earthquake
and dual birth reunions, I emerge
in Pike Market with her, my first mother.
Where on earth did she come from,
where would we go?
As in a dream, amid a myriad of colors
and crowds, we swim upstream.
We push through to our source,
birth the curious and the new,
then slip away.
Spellbound by a young tenor’s aria,
we linger in its magic, hands entwined.
Enraptured, eyes brimming. We float,
our feet moving slowly, his voice drifts off.
Both shock and balm, a loss exquisite.
Was the singer an apparition… were we?
Moonflower
Bringing the dark into light,
we continue to share much beauty.
It is simply a matter of time before all is illuminated and we can see what’s been there all along .
-River (my birth daughter)