she tastes like skittle shots and feels like glitter

she swallowed the earth three times;
once, when she was young,
because she liked the way it tingled in her belly.
her smile became its mountains,
her giggles, its wind.
her walk became its dance, and twirl (and twirl) she did.

again,
when she was older,
because she'd lost it one day,
and she had missed the way it tingled her belly.
her watery eyes became rain,
her groaning, its storms.
her stumble became its earthquakes, and stumble she did.

for the third time,
when she had grown up,
because she'd put it away.
she wondered if it'd tingle her belly, this time.
her pen became its holy book,
her thoughts, its religion.
her trek became every footfall of its journey.

she swallowed the earth three times,
and built it three times,
but mostly, the earth built her.

sometimes, it terrifies me

she's been laid bare to me,
with all of her hazards,
and all of her consequences.
she'll be my downfall-
i'll have her anyway,
because, to me, she represents
the essence of life;
my very own breath
was wrought within her, and by her.
and by her i abide,
and i know who i am-
nothing more or less than He made.

She's been laid bare to me,
nevertheless, i will
bring her into my arms- two months;
that's all i have to wait.

bigger than he thinks

you were formed in the back of his mind, while he couldn't think about the consequences, so enraptured was he by
the work of his own hands, and lower extremities, and the way the leash felt on her, tight in its collar around her neck.
and the edge of his thoughts was where you sat, while he groaned in the deepest parts of himself, about what he had done.
and all the while, you were out there, because the sun is brighter and warmer than the briars among which he let you grow;
you filled the holes that he'd left with his sheers with other things. prettier, greener. it wasn't smoke burning in your chest. not to you.

you were formed in the back of his mind, while he couldn't think about the consequences, so enraptured was he in the moment.
but you were knitted by two hands, meticulous, attending to every detail- the forefront of thought and consideration, and this was done by another.
pushed out of conscious thought by one, except for to mourn the loss of the amazing that he could see, but it's because he doesn't know you.
he knows, but he does not comprehend- not fully- that you're nestled in the palm of someone greater, and that someone greater sees you as your own someone.

someone bigger, and brighter, and on a better-paved road than the bread-trail that your father sees.

i'm not real, sometimes

tornadoes and shock are terrible things,
and when shock is caught up in the wind
you can't feel it.
sometimes, tornadoes make me not feel anything.
not even it itself.
but i'm always aware of its presence-
-i've watched them unearth my safe-houses,
and break the boughs off of my best trees-
-but i never
can make myself feel like i am a part of them.
i think i'm not real, sometimes.

for other people

i am in a place right now
where i can't make sandcastles for other people.
i always build them too close to the shore,
because i know how much they want to be free;
or i'll build them too far inland, where no one
can see them, because you need to be kept safe.
i think i've figured out why, though;
and it's because you can't build someone else a sandcastle
if you're still trying to decide where to build yours.

potentially less like them

i've made another self-discovery today
i can hear the hope in your fingers
as you ask me what i've found out
i'm sorry i murmur, it's nothing to do with that
i can see your shoulders deflating
behind the screen as you inquire
on second thought, maybe i can't share it with you.
i'm not angry, but you tend to stipulate too much.
i see the "r" right away, but you
take ten minutes to say "okay"
i'm just even less like you than i thought i was,
and i've decided, without you, that that's okay

safer places than this

sometimes i find that the safest places
are the ones formed in the mind of another.
i've escaped to Rivendell before, and i've
tried to muster the courage to drink ent-draught
in the gentle shadows of fangorn
while i pretend to believe that treebeard, at least,
would carry me on his shoulder and tell me
that ents are okay with these sorts of things.

sometimes i find that i feel safest in
places that i've formed in my own mind.
i've felt at peace on the stone streets of dashaer,
with a handful of almonds, and the knowledge that i'm in a land
where the people were trusted with guarding a place of rest
for fallen stars.
i feel at home among the dragons and their nomads,
waking up with dew etched into the lines of my skin
every morning, and with a scratchy throat,
because my blankets were damp; but it's a good feeling.
my draw to them is that they're always moving
and i'd never have to look at the same place
for more than two weeks.

rarely are the safest places real.
there are some, tucked away between mountains
or nestled behind a fortress of trees.
some of these places are by the fire, where i can pretend
that the people i'm sitting with honestly love me.
sometimes i can feel safe with a cup of hot chocolate
or chamomile tea, steeped light, with steam curling around my nose.
i feel at home in flower shops and obscure churches--
--the kind my mother told me to stay away from--
and on college drive, where i can watch people walk by
and pretend to see into their lives based on
the way they hold themselves, and the kinds of books they carry.

i feel safe during worship services,
where the only words are my Father's.
but i realize once i leave, that i can't tell them what i saw.
because the only places that are safe
are the ones where they don't exist, and they'd never believe me
because how could God condone something so obscure?

sometimes, safe places are people,
but i doubt that i'll ever trust that quite as easily
as i did five days ago.

These are all absolutely stunning and the last one made me hurt.

omg teach me to write

at the crossroad

"you talk about yourself too much,"
you say, and i try to take a sip of water, but it gets stuck.
because i know that i do, but pinning words into a trail-
one that's easily followed and recognized, and not scattered-
is the only way i know of to find the scraps of myself that i've dropped.
and i spend hours listening to other people's trails,
strewn with their own "woe is me" and their petty problems,
and all i want is for one of them, maybe even for you,
to understand that i only ever talk about myself
when my trail has too many forks at the crossroad.

just leaving a quick note here that apparently the best compliment we can offer one another is this made me hurt but freaking GOD, isha, you're on fire.

luma, i love you <333

onions make you cry

people and ogres are like onions,
but people more closely resemble ogres,
and ogres more closely resemble people.
misunderstood and mistreated, as they are in the movie
with the girl who must obey.

i spend too much time pretending to read,
and too little time actually skimming the words,
but i still know these things,
because i get lost in your eyes, which know
all of the secrets of humanity and what we resemble,
and your eyes are my favourite story.

owww.

some were forgotten, in those days

you wore three points on your uniform,
shaded in by the colour of degradation
your parched throat held onto the cry to god,
refusing to release it, because the screams kept
pushing their way through instead.
how else does one cope with being ripped apart by dogs?

no one cared about your tattered points,
and they kicked you in the heart after you were dead,
and laughed, because they saw you bleeding
the colour of degradation.
(i wish you could see what that colour's become).

you believe him with everything

you painted him a masterpiece, and you used your fingers
because brushes felt impersonal, and you wanted him to feel,
and to feel your heartbeat in the acrylics- you've been told before
that that's where your pulse leaks into people.
it stains them, they tell you, but in a good way.

this masterpiece, you told him, was your lives, and how you felt as though
you'd stitched yourselves together with threads formed from flames
of a stubborn, blue-hot fire, fuelled by a source that no one can see,
but everyone knows that it probably won't ever run out.
and he smiled at you, with his eyebrows furrowed
and said that it was beautiful.

he's the six foot three to your five foot eight,
and his chest may as well be your forehead's favourite pillow,
because you can reach it standing up, and it has a heartbeat
kind of like the one that leaks from your fingertips,
which he claimed stained him a brighter shade of life.

you couldn't hang up the masterpiece you'd given him,
because the canvas wasn't a physical thing,
but its rivets matched the lines in the skin on each of your bodies,
and the colours were deeper, painted over soul, spirit and mind
and it did, indeed, become your life together.

your fire-threads never break, but they've been pulled taut a few times
by disagreements and misunderstandings, all painted brown,
all accounted for and forgiven (forgiveness, you decided, is blue).
and now you lay there every night, his body your blanket,
(his chest remains your favourite pillow)
and you listen to your masterpiece in the rhythm of his heartbeat
and know, full-well and, that you'd been right.