Ibises in trees, helping me leave
💛
Marti help me
Rise out of my coffee like a spoon
Sit across from me in this diner
Confident in your yellow turtleneck
Trying to direct my traffic
"You're going to get your clothes together"
After I eat eggs & jalapeños
And try to shore up my power
Ingy help me
"You still have to leave"
Even though my wife is crying at home and saying "I trusted you, I trusted you"
I trusted me too
I acted confident
And sometimes I was
But I was a whole different person
She's dead now
The part that wanted so desperately to be married, and "settled down"
White picket fence queer
Because that felt like safety
Until the house fell apart
On the day of our wedding I looked into the cloudy sky and thought "maybe not"
But then the sun came out and I did it anyway
In uncomfortable shoes
While worrying about how much fun the guests were having
And whether my vows were the right amount of funny vs tender
I remember every one
Though I don't remember yours
It's my own doing, my "fault"
That the relationship was all about your needs
Because I didn't know how to exist
And I didn't know what it meant
That kind of commitment
Because I didn't value my own life
Now your energy is a nest of live wires
Trying to electrify what I won't give you
Unsafe
And I value my life now
More than yours, which I thought I could save
Ingy found herself unsafe too
Because she wanted to be the hero
💙
You told me once
There was a baby boy lying in his own shit in a crib
An addict birth mother, leaving the picture
And a two-spirit second parent who seduced you into the dream
"Let's run away to Arizona"
"We'll raise him together"
Until your partner became jealous
Of the kindness with which you treated waiters
The light always shining out of you
Even when you were drunk and high
You were good, you were so good
You were too good for this world
You stayed too long because there was a helpless baby boy
(I know you loved him more than your lover)
Until the boy was 10, and you couldn't take the hits anymore
You did the best you could, dear one
I hope you have let go of the guilt
Tho I see it still embroidering your blue robe on the other side
Orange and red
Maybe the color is what made your life interesting
I know you still watch over my cousin, tho he is a heinous Republican
Who doesn't believe gays should raise children
Because his own parents fucked up so bad
Manic Monday blasts from the diner radio
I wonder if you to listened to that, on your way back to Ohio
To dry out again at your parents' house
Ashamed of the highs you chased in the desert
Until the lows found you again
🎵 And I can't stop this feeling anymore
I forgot what I started fighting for 🎵
What gave you the strength to leave?
Despite the guilt
Over the child you had no right to protect
Who would spend the next 8 years without a stable adult
How did you save yourself?
"I just had to"
I imagine you
Waking up to sunlight through the windowshade
And maybe just knowing, like I know
"It's time"
Throwing some shit in a bag
Temperance with a coffee cup in one hand,
Pouring the rest of the tequila down the sink with the other
Maybe you left a note because you couldn't face your lover-turned-captor
"I'm sorry, I just have to go"
Maybe you realized your presence couldn't save the boy
Because the fights between his parents were so bad, it became unsafe
Breaking dishes
(Dishes breaking in my own home at the same time)
All of us isolated
World-changers and cycle-breakers
Still on the underside of the wheel
Others envy our light
That shines even through our water and clouds
I want to awaken my blazing sun
And use it without apology
Though all my life I was told to hide it
To make others more comfortable in the dark holes they chose
🎵 Do you really want to hurt me?
Do you really want to make me cry? 🎶
A narcissistic chorus
We are not responsible for the emotions of others
I think you know that now
Tho the first couple years after your death, I felt your spirit as a busybody 😂
Trying to tell me what to do
You still fly over as the hawk
The right amount of attached / detached
For you know my power needs to breathe too
And the complete lack of control we have over others
Let their emotions swell like seas
As my wife must cry new rivers
To take her own boat where it needs to go
Her own spirit guide is with me today
Hawk-nosed woman in a red corset and kerchief
For some reason she is protecting me
More than her charge
"You need to get out"
I know
Protect me
🎶 There's got to be something better than in the middle 🎵
🩷
Walking home, great aunt Kathy beside me
"Sometimes you just have to"
One of her husbands twisted her arm behind her back until the bone snapped
Part of my light is remembering these dark stories
So I can bring them out into the sun & show the world
"Look what you did, look what you did"
"Look what I did too"
Death doula
Because the way we let shame die is to lay it bare
❤️
The guides wait patiently for me to pack my shit
Angels filling my house, keeping my wife's red demons on the ground floor
Which I unfortunately have to walk thru repeatedly
My red dragon breathes in my throat
Trying to melt the ice freezing me to the bed
I am obsessed with timing
Afraid of fucking this up more than it already is, why??
Being red means offending people
Because I need to attend to my own needs first
And I NEED to get out of here
(Unsafe) the child selves are hiding under the covers
The angels wait patiently in the doorframes
The adult throws clothes indiscriminately in trash bags
Everything I don't need immediately, cuz I'm still going to sleep here tonight
Another red spirit protects me, I think
Hands make a rectangle
Holding space
Thank you
🚗🚗🚗
The camper is tight
Everything in it is brown
And smells slightly of mold
But the good kind-- grandma's house
I make a temporary altar on the dining table
To lay out the few crystals I took with me
Clear quartz
Onyx
Carnelian
Tiger's Eye
Aventurine
Bloodstone
Citrine
Chrysoprase
A light blue stone with a hole in it that looks like the ocean (calcite?)
Light yellow worry beads from Italy (also calcite?)
Red jasper llama
Aventurine rabbit
Blue sodalite frog
I forgot the serpentine-- I'm gonna take that one
And one of my aunt's amethysts if I can find them
And the white howlite wolf that still guards my side of the altar
I am struggling not to feel guilty for vacating
It is too easy
Because almost all my shit was already stuffed in one room
The shared spaces were all about her
And the shared spaces in our minds and conversations
I don't understand
Why she doesn't understand
That she was in love with a lack of me
Missing the emotional servant, the attendant
I told you, she is dead
I hope
🍵☕🏆
I want to only share cups
With people who listen back
Who remember things about me
And like me for more than how I make them feel
I know you did, once
I erased myself, slowly, over the course of 10 years
Because I thought that was devotion
It was subjugation
I wish you had noticed
I wish I had noticed
Our second time meeting at the coffee shop
That the way you looked at me
Wasn't quite right
I did notice
I wrote a song called "You're Not the One for Me"
The songs are usually usually right
But then I let myself become possessed
❤️
I don't know how to take the fourth cup
Because I thought stability was this
Self-sacrificing
All my hours to a company that does not respect me
All my affection to a partner who doesn't give it back
I thought if I was good
The world would be good to me
I bowed
Instead of sitting on my throne
I chased sparks
Instead of tending my hearth
How do I take the fourth cup?
When I don't even know what it is?
Patience
❤️
One more day of moving
My spurned wife's own guide bids me to get up, get up
Finish packing and cleaning and get out of here
My card of the day is 9 of Swords
This is a literal nightmare
I am frozen
I bid the red dragon to breathe anger and self-possession from my throat
If I have to hurt her to exist
Then that is the way of things
💙
Cerridwen bids me to honor the pool
And let it be deep
When she cries -- stop trying to explain with logic
Only say "I know it hurts"
"I know"
It is the emotional midbrain that needs to be held
Though I couldn't hold her
Though I deerly wished I could, as a friend
I could not give her false hope
💜
I stomp grapes to kill demons
And I stomp grapes for love
Hers and mine
Not just romantic-- expansive
I wish love did not have to die
And could just keep going forever and ever
I cried to Lava Mother
She offered a piece of her bark
But when I pulled it up there were two black beetles beneath it
I let them be
(Void magick)
💚❤️💙
I repotted two devotional plants
I hope they live
The one, I found taking over an abandoned lot, so probably 😂
(It said "pull me if you want me to come" 😂)
The other is a baby of a baby of a spider plant we once had
From my wife's grandmother
It died but not until after we had given offshoots to all our family members
My cousin gave me one back
It's already grown twice its size
Spider plants are hard to kill
Until they just die, for whatever reason
When they run out of nutrients
Or just decide it's time
🚙
Now I lay in the camper (trailer emoji when?)
Which moves slightly in the wind, honestly kinda fun
Tho something on the outside is RATTLING and driving me NUTS
I bet when it rains, you can hear it on the tin roof
And theres a vent over the bed that opens all the way up to the sky
It is both so big that I can't imagine towing it anywhere
And so small that I can't imagine cooking in here
I've never used a gas stove
I must learn to do a lot of things
It feels easier when I can see blue sky through the ceiling
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