off the Shoulder

i

i woke up to the sound of a violin trying to rip out of my chest plate, this is not different inside of me. i hold things. things that come with sound and pulse. i have lost my own, but i rebuild new ones out of stuff like instruments, birds, color, and stars. i a violin this morning. and tomorrow, call me sky, how i will make it rain hands.

My Playlist. Hurts. But I’m gonna listen. Shut up, and Listen

(Source: lo-vereigns)

For Dania

Her fingers untwine through the shivering of your skin

Somehow you are holding a piece of you

Something that was made inside of you out of nowhere

But you gave this, her, to the world without any expectations

You are woman with a mountain growing in your arms

Do not hold like a diamond; that is something you buy

Hold her like nature, something that is already here because it needs to be here

Hold her the way you would carry water in your palms if it was possible

She is water today; you are holding water, something not everyone could do

You are mother, with tender touch, faithful to her spring

The only testimony of where she came from

There are no take backs in this world and

She is going nowhere, but onward with you. 

tree

You gave birth to a Quaking Aspen

Considered the trembling giant

You are lonely up there, blooming all by yourself

But do not curl into us any longer

You have earned the suns attention and

The world’s approval of beauty when it is still

Trees are known to be a sign of strength even

When they bend in different directions by seasons, but

You have never cracked like seashells on land,

You belong better under the sea where the water and concentration of

Salt is thick enough to keep you away from the filth above you

You have born again, like a flower,

You lose your petals, but like the stem

No root of ancestor is pulling you down

Keep promising leaves

Keep budding papyrus

Use your arms like branches:

To hold and carry, no one does it better than you.

I am going there.

something small.

This morning—mourning

I lost my voice

the only sound that came out

was the one God had hemmed—passively into my lungs and

i used it.

I hummed myself to the other side of the eclipse

and there i was, sitting 

next to a star

my voice was solitude

it was narrow

it was echo

it was firework

and God, finally, sung to me.

My prayers walk differently these days

They resemble the moon at times,

pealing themselves half way

so I wouldn’t always fully understand their light

“Between the Shadow and the Soul”

I do not love you as if you were the salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where “I” does not exist, nor “you”,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

- Pablo Neruda

This year:

Christmas is an empty dinner table

The television on high, to pretend there is people around

and nothing in the oven

I turned on the shower, called out my own name

so I can hear my grandmother was rushing me

this year Christmas is quiet like a baby’s yawn.