Diaries

29 April 2024

29 April 2024

Today is my birthday, a big birthday, and all I could think about was you. While I got ready for work, I played Christmas music, the kind you would like because I wanted the day to be December. Because maybe that’s the month you think of me. I sprayed perfume on my wrists, one you mentioned in a store one day while we were shopping. I wore blue jewelry with some earrings you bought me along with the ring that I think was supposed to be a proposal of marriage. And as I drove down the road before exiting my neighborhood, there was a strange sighting of a cardinal– the brightest red. He stood between grassline and asphalt, undisturbed by the passing cars. Motionless in alarm by the female that played in the wet morning dew grass, he watched her, and I thought of you that day I played in the snow, when you took my favorite picture of me. Today I will restrain myself from contacting you because what I want I cannot ask of you nor can you give it to me.  

Photo by Nirav Patel

Diaries

28 July 2024

28 July 2024

This summer, I’ve been trying– waiting– to get back to myself. Even when I laugh, I don’t recognize that part of me.  The laughter that comes out is erratic and untuned.  It’s been too long since joy was a true utterance of mine.  I forget that birthing, no matter how many times, is messy.  

Photo credit: Unknown

Diaries

23 April 2024

I watched a man walk down a hallway with his two little kids. I remembered what it felt like to have my foster girls and feeling like I had no real connection to them.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to attach myself for harm that I would be hurt as they weren’t mine and would be taken away, given back to their parents.  I thought for a moment what it would be like to be that man with my own children.  They are your kidneys, I thought.  Just because they are outside your body doesn’t make them lesser to care for but even more so outside our bodies.  

Photo credit: Freepik 

Relationships

To Inhabit Your Soul

To Inhabit Your Soul

I want so much 

to look into those bold, beautiful eyes, 

my eyes to follow the patterns and hues inside yours.     

Your lids, heavy, conceal some of their shape. 

My eyes trace over the lower half of what I can see:    

pebbled white capstones tipped in sea blue, 

outlined, each, in charcoal gray;  

hugged honeycombed grids of hazel green; 

and dilated pupils, honey brown, veiled by lashes 

like vertical scribblings of a three year old who stays 

inside the lines yet never fully shades in a circular object. 

Though each layer goes untouched by human closeness, 

I memorize each ring as you were created to be, 

I want it just as it is, 

just as you are, 

layers of you to trace 

as I fall into trance, 

unafraid of your soul’s shields  

with all its heraldic colors,    

sure I will conquer heart’s suit of ardent armor:

I will watch it fall to the ground,

from tremor to trepidation,

like hurriedly stripped dressing that lies on the floor. 

I will take nothing less. 

Artist Malcolm T. Liepke, “Couple in Love”, 2001

Relationships

Whispers of You on Pages

I thought of asking for a reading list, one crafted by you.
I’d make a specific request:
Something meaningful but not the kind with heavy weight,
for my heart is ragged, tattered, exhausted– not just from what I’ve experienced but
the simple evils of the world and life’s cruelty where love is kept from those who deserve it.

Are you afraid to feel?

Yes,
to bring me closer, closer to you.

Photo cred: Unknown


Poetry | Relationships

Where Does All the Love Go

Where does all the love go? 
Is it like the wind, 
unrealized yet felt? 
Like chaff blown about and 
to what end would the tumble rest? 
Or like the lotus flower
that floats from water's edge? 

Could one consume it like holy communion
where wafer dissolves on the tongue? 
Or could one simply claim it with spoken words: 
"At last! This one is bone from my bone, 
and flesh from my flesh"? 

Where does all the love go 
if not to the one that it's intended for?

Painting by Claude Monet, c.1907

“To Make You Feel My Love” (cover) by Dave Fenley

Relationships

Washing of Water by Words

This time I chose to love alone, or has this love chosen me?  

I likened its constancy to strength, resilience, and rebirth. I wrestled in its intertwined hope and despair.  I tried to cast it off with prayers; long talks and walks with close friends, with myself; I tried to write it out of me; I tried to place it on the altar of sacrifice– all of this to no avail.  It seemed to claw its way back into the you-shaped hole inside me like some puzzle piece that was meant to be there–remain there– until my last breath.  Like a thorn of the flesh, I decided to make peace with its place in my life.  It was a part of me; I couldn’t abandon myself.           

I imagine you love me back–that you always loved me, that you never stopped.  That you love me so much that you would learn another language, if you could– a language learned just for me so that you could express your deep, watery emotions.  You’d discover some satisfaction in its translation and, with it, frustration by its limitations.  Because you, like me, understand these are the deep wells of the heart that are incomprehensible.  That with each attempted reach to draw them out, it becomes harder to retrieve, and yet with unwieldy hope, like a sacrament, we’d try to rend them from the heart so as to sanctify the other in the washing of water by words.         

Photo credit: Unknown

Poetry | Relationships

Lilac Love

Lilac Love

Even if our next meeting is in passing, 

I want you to feel something, 

like a gentle breeze, scented   

of lilac lavender in bloom, 

like a coming up for air.    

Photo by Yganko

Fiction | Relationships

If You Were a Color

Written 21 December 2023 

If you were a color, you would be every shade of blue.  Light blue would symbolize your boyish charm; reflected innocence yet restrained wisdom; one who accepts and believes and welcomes like a child.

You are electric blue– refreshing, eye-catching, standing out among the rest, exciting and fun, and fulfilling of adventure– the kind of blue that never dulls.   

You once bought a blue-green cashmere sweater for me to wear for you– extremely soft, insulating, fine and rare– a sophisticated color, the only kind deserving of you. 

I would get lost and scared in your crystal blue eyes.  I was at your mercy in those moments. There is a thin line between self-control and surrender.   

If anything you are mostly like the ocean blue. If the ocean is blue because water absorbs colors in the red part of the light spectrum, you work magic. Effortlessly, you filter one’s perception to see the unseen potential and possibilities of life and the self.         

Like the ocean, you are in constant flux.  In a wave crest or plunge, you display grace and power, playfully and dangerously.  Everything slows down and speeds up all at the same time.  You are calm and ravenous, gentle yet swallowing everything whole, much like how you love– all encompassing. You’d have it no other way.  Love is vast for you, like an idol.  Even a part of me wanted to bow down to what seemed so worthy of worship.

I cannot grasp you, yet you engulf me.  For me, it’s an experience– an anticipated euphoria; for you, I am not sure what it is.  You remain mysterious, unable to pin down, yet I wouldn’t even think of it being another way. You love your freedom and independence to be and create. I trust you as you make room for my small human frame.     

I once thought of you as a Sirius star, but you are vaster, more instrumental. You are the blue black sky that contains all the stars, and even though you might lose one here and there, you hold it all together, like Father God. Though you could be the brightest star in the sky, you are much too large to be contained to a singular number.  

You are all encompassing, enveloping, framing– every shade of blue to be desired.    

Painting by Aykut Aydogdu