I am learning
to leave my skin
Behind;
Thin skin; tough skin, weak skin;
transparent,
calloused,
sheded; do not keep your scales
for too long
I am learning
To feel the wholeness
of my body
as its own space;
it's own experience;
it's own memory
holding patterns
that must die;
that have died;
that no longer live
three times.
My carcass
of past self
of past selves
is vast
is vacant
is vermouth-- dry.
it's like my carcass
is a cavern
and my memories
of moments that made me
are an
echo
e c h o
e i
c o n
h g
to fill the empty space above glass lakes;
Mirrors in the mountains
With a penable but distant sur-face.
It's like my carcass
is a caravan
and the words spoken
that sting
my ears still
are campfire smoke
smoldering
moldering
molding,
clinging like mud to the wheels;
a coarse hood to cover my ears at winds too harsh.
I am learning
to let that carcass
decay
I am learning
to let the heart center
be cleft
open
to let the dead body of past passion
crawl out;
mucus clinging;
voice box, croaking;
I take two hands
and expand the crease in my chest
to let her out.
I do not force her;
I do not evict her.
I tried that before--
and grew tired
of the fight.
Slow,
Steady,
Breaths-- like Lamaze, but for the dead.
I learn how to let
that hole that is left
be a piece of me;
be the peace of me.
I learn
how to let
you fill it
in all your fullness
that is more than your interactions
with me.
that is all
of your self-made
history
self-made
self suffiency.
Maybe I needed you then--
I won't fault myself any more for that--
but you never needed me.
and that's okay.
that's...
oh....
I am trusting
and I am transmuting;
I am thrusting myself through
the thale-cress crested threshold;
Pushing myself on the pale path
oh...
to journey the road
of white buds
& moonlight.
Perhaps in relearning
who all of you
is
I will remember
all the things that I loved--
and all the things
that never included me;
that would never be me;
that fit like the wrong shoe.
Oh....
to be a cobbler
to refit & rehyde a heel
to retrofit
who a person is
to fit your own narrative
of them.
to lie
to yourself.
your self, esteemed.
You are still the same-- still as gentle and generous and gracious.
You are still....
as I am just the same-- vivacious and vibrant and viscous.
I am just...
just....
what?
The babble is made
by the brooke meeting the boulder.
oh, I love that sound.
so I shall seek it in measure-- the never ending ebb & flow
the rise and wane of ripples
the coming & going
of crystal
clarity.
I feel it now-- the tempering.
tempest turned temperance; the balancer of scales
the alchemist of the Arcana
the angel of androgyny.
FOURTEENTH in the deck;
after death, of one-three;
before one-five--the deviling.
I am prepared.
To be weighed & measured;
I am prepped
to be wheyed and tempered.
my carcass
is like a cateran;
my memory
it's melody;
a scream
known only
to history.
you are not his story,
the winds whisper to me.
he was never YOUR story
my bones bade me grow.
And I will say it
I will know it
I will understand it
not as the miaden
but as the mother
and very soon
the crone.
And I will say it:
a part of me-
the cavernous part;
the carnivorous part;
the cautious & childish parts--
will always love
a part of you--
the part of you
that I believed
could love me
would love me
secretly did;
but you didn't.
and that's
O-Kay.
That's
Oh...
I let it rise
the risk
the rinse
the rivers
the riker
from my catacombs of my ribs
to hover
just above
my chest.
and maybe
I am finally okay
with just knowing
just seeing
that you are okay
& that it wasn't me
who made you that way--
It was you.
Why?
Oh....
you.
and in that echo I hear my own reflection--
I turn
I see
Me.
I Turn & see that I am OKAY.
& that it wasn't you
who made me that way.
Maybe I was right
when I was young;
When I was 12.
you were just like me.
you were a refracted reflection of my core.
But it was only because
you too
were going to make it;
going to make
your own way.
you too
made it okay.
you
made
it.
oh...
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