This is a blog where you can feel understood, and the poems are relatable on a deep level, drawing you in and making you want to read more. --- banner art by Payton banner art edited by J Rich Studios
She told you about her
nightmare. She hoped
that by doing so, she'd
be laying them at your
feet like burdens &
by the fact of
hrist: she hoped
that ce those
nightmares would
be taken away, you'd
become her dreams
that take those lace
she told you about
her nightmares &
double it tracking
it from a sleepunting to a haunting
that happens
outside heredroom.
“In the silence of nature, we find the true essence of our soul” - Unknown
Tell me the story
Tell me the story bout he
shrubs & the cotton tales,
Tell me about the
flowers not the native to this land,
tTell me how each morning the sun kisses
these beautiful trespassers
on the pedals like
outstretched hands of maidens. Tell me
how all these gifts are bestowed upon
by the birds you brought
them across oceans.
Tell me about the
generations whose
called this knowing
forgotten place home.
Tell me
about the band
you had in it,
how you
blessed even the
pebbles & told the
water how to be still
for no one, but
to old the
reflection of the moon
so that every creature that lives
below its water could
I still see the moon.
Tell me that story,
the story of how it thrived before our kind &
how since then
it turned it into a dessert.
The dark isn't even the dark anymore.
Sometimes I wonder if the stars,
the sticker stars on my childhood
bedroom walls are real ones in disguise.
When I turned the lights off
really paying attention
I saw them, the neon green lights
ones that I had forgotten
all about. Seeing them almost for
the first time, I felt at awe.
I wonder if they heard my
whispered wishes -
I wonder if those adhesive buggers
heard my prayers,
I wonder if they ponder thoughts in the air
if my thoughts ever caught up to them
like how as if being in a Christian household
that the lines between
God & stars weren't blerd.
If concept differences of the two
weren't questioned and clarified.
I wonder if they got enough light
they'd gain the same soulas their muse in the sky.
I wonder if they heard
me crying at night, if so would one of them
have voluntarily fallen off the wall
wishing itself into a tissue to wipe my tears with
over the issues of the day?
I used to wonder if being inside all day,
never being in the sky
that they had forgotten their ways &
if hearing about stars - real stars
must have been like hearing a myth;
I wonder if seeing what they were modeled after
on television is any different than listening to conversations
from our parents about their lives.
Cause stars are meant to be outside - not
stuck on the walls formatted in clumps.
I wonder if I snitched on off the walls, took it outside,
if the sky would recognize it as it's own,
taking it away from me as if it being a lost child,
reclaiming it or is that rejection why this star is a sticker
wildy out of place - like me
where prayers toe the line of being wishes.
I wonder if stars, wishing on them
was just a hidden way of saying a prayer,
if the stars are agent angels if the stars once
they gather the wishes turn into envelopes
with the translated prayers & are handed up
to God.
Last night,
they didn't shine so bright, neither did I,
but my inner child - that Disney girl at heart
left those stars, for me, to remind me of my whimsey
I want to begin by saying that one of the paradoxes of being a woman is being a woman that people automatically assume fits into more than one box. It’s being a woman who before the age of sixteen has already grasped the understanding of all of the less complicated boxes she doesn't fit into before she understands who she is. My skin is the first thing that appears to draw people in. Getting them to come observe closer, beckoning them beyond the lines of the simplest & the unspoken boundaries. My hair doesn’t help. If my skin doesn’t leave them confused enough, my hair will do the trick. Its texture can be lethal. Pulling people into act without a single thought, touching it, getting fingers lost in the curls or the tamed straightened hair I made sure to lay down before I left home. My skin, my hair & my eyes combined are the ‘red rum’ of all good days. You see, to the naked eye, my appearance appears to be the best of both worlds. I’m not talking about the conversation starters. ‘Who’s the black parent? Mom or Dad?’ I’m talking about people seeing my mother once & jumping the gun. I’m talking about strangers. People who can’t even pronounce my name correctly. People who are 100% outside of my family unknowingly or even self-consciously tell me that they know more about me, about my family & its entire history just by looking at me, by acknowledging my skin tone as neither day nor night, good nor bad according to ancestral times that they must have found the puzzle piece of who I am & now hold it in their hands offering it to as if to me being a morsel. I’m talking about being assumed that I am not black at all. That I’m Hispanic, someone so far removed from the motherland that I’ve found myself here. I’m talking about having a woman (cause no man has yet dared to tread these waters)assuming that I am Latina, that I must be fluent in Spanish, that I must understand the motherland’s tongue. I’m talking about getting offended as I am afraid to allow myself to get when I have to reply “No habla mucho español” almost as if I had taken everything they've ever known, smashed it into a bullet loaded it into a gun & used it as a weapon against them. I'm talking about the sideway glance when I enter a store. As if they're not sure whether or not to trust me - trust me too but what I'm set out to buy & do so with the exact change or Apple Pay or whether or not what I've come in for will fit into my wallet-sized purse or the pockets that won't even hold my phone. I'm talking about the side eyes that could shoot daggers into you when I tried to sit down with a table of peers; of being rejected by both sides altogether or only took me in almost in the hope that they'll rub off on me & I'll change before very eyes like a mood rings telling them just who & what I am even though mirrors could never do so. I'm talking about the question like a multiple choice questionnaire as if there is a correct response as if I'll somehow fail it if I get it wrong. I'm talking about being told in a joking manner that I am whitewashed or sound uneducated. I like to end by saying you're one of the paradoxes of living, is living as a woman who understands these concepts all too well. Wondering who they are in searching for role models who somehow second-handedly compensate. I'm talking about living, keeping strong, and building a strong foundation if you are & who you are not to become.
The angels clipped their wings in rebellion.
The wind that the creator created refused to
carry them.
The angels never learned
how to speak to the wind's language;
so they live with us to try & learn.
We try to teach them
how to listen to the birds,
cause only they really know,
the language of the wind,
but the angels refused.
We try to teach them
how to look at the sky
the sun & the moon, but
the angles are always too busy --
busy either throughout the day,
or busy at night getting some rest.
to look
