for reverent green? forever in green?

I like to look in windows at night to see the yellowish warmth hidden within. When we're riding through the mist, in the chill of the early winter, I know that we will make a warm space for us and that the glow will draw others in as we light the fires. I like to be warm in the snowfall and watch the magic of twinkling lights and sparkling ground as we cover miles and hours and distance that we never thought possible, even though the whole world was watching and waiting for us to understand. r

For my Mom Mom

She used to feed my graham crackers with strawberry jam on them and keep tins of sweets hidden under her bed for when I would stay over. She would call me precious cargo and speed through the city with me belted into her passenger seat while she yelled at other motorists. She taught me a lot about being a lady and even more about being tough. The first time I ate pumpkin pie, it was because she told me to stop being stupid and just try something new for once. She was 16 when she had her first kid and never lied to me about that, choosing instead to tell me to be careful not to end up with one of my own. When I was 16, she helped me dye my hair blue in my mother's wash basin because, as she put it: "If you're gonna make yourself look like an ass, you're gonna do it right." My mother still has not forgiven her for this, but I never forgot how to use a tint brush after that. She was the kind of woman who would lug two oxygen tanks and half a dozen pill bottles through the inner city just to make sure that two squirming 12 year olds got to see the latest Nightmare on Elm Street in the theaters, on the day it opened. She chose her battles wisely and knew when to give in, but she could stop you dead in your tracks with one dirty look. Even at the very end of her life, she still went out of her way to make me feel special with 32 different kinds of cheese sandwiches and cakes on my 17th birthday. She was always my rock and my idol and my safest place and I will always miss her.

Daisy, Daisy Under The Sky So Blue

I used to wonder why I never got them. Why no one would ever bring me one of the 20,000 types of daisies out there one afternoon, when the sunlight was streaming through the windows but it was too chilly out for blooming. So one day, I made some for myself out of some dirty old cardboard and an old screen. It was good day; just rolling the ink over the surface and feeling like I was adding something beautiful to an otherwise bleak place. It took me years to accept that no one but me liked them and they stayed locked away for some time.

It's that way with kindness too, isn't it? You open yourself up to let a little light out. And it hurts to be so open and so exposed, like you split your ribs wide and ran with your most vulnerable part forward into a war. And it is hard for me to accept that, sometimes, that kindness meets cruelty, so I wish I could lock it up like my daisies.

The problem is that nothing is that simple and nature rarely hides for long. The clouds only cover Orion for so long, and you eventually have to let yourself go again.
And it's hard to be this way when the world is not and hard to let go of the hatred that comes when you're left holding your peace in the palm of your hand and the ugly whine of desperation
still rings in your ears.

So I pray, with a candle and a pen, to being able to breathe and to be able to see the beauty and the peace which is right beside me even when the sunlight streams through the windows and it is too chilly to bloom.

I hope you can someday do the same Les Petite Fille, because karma can be a real bitch when you don't.

Sometimes, It's Just Like Bile.

And I never know how to explain the fear I feel, except to say "It's like a storm?". When the whistle blows and the cracks in the sky get more vivid and I remember the 14th day when the rain was so fierce and I was so scared of a spoiled little girl with claws a mile long and I was right to be. This voodoo magic of silent worry has always worked before, but now it failed and I fell into a rabbit hole of anger and maybe even hate. And, oh, now I know regret like chewing on bile in my sleep because I was focused on kindness and I forgot that sometimes it doesn't pay.

I've never been one to play a game or take a risk but I'm right here, where I've always been and shaking and reaching out. I want things. Like to be a new penny in your pocket and to let go but it's a process just like any other. I only want to be better than the bottom of the heap. I only want outshine those who are broken...in your eyes. No veils, no lies, no holding on to that which can't be repaired and no blank and manipulative eyes.

ribbit

I like frogs and turtles and owls and squirrels and I can never spell "necessary" correctly. I like to eat strawberries and split grapes between our mouths as the planet spins and we all howl at the moon. It's been a minute now and I feel dirty and clean at the same time and sometimes, it makes me profoundly sad to think of you, but mostly I just smile and think of the way we slide into place. "If the fit is good" a queen once said, "then, honey, you got yourself a winner." And I love the way your colors shine when you make them bend with the light of insight and your spirit.

-words by me, art by Chuck Angeline

The Ark Of Vulnerability is Apon Us.

I don't know where the sunbeams end and the starlight begins. It's all a mystery"

It's the times when
the journey of your rough hands
meets my flawed
topography and the explosion
starts to dissolve my edges.
In that shrinking moment
I am everything that was
and everything I will be. Moving
with you, beneath you, above
you, around you.
We are a particulate
symphony of harmonic buzz--
a little death, a tiny
birth, and cleansing
of the mirror so we can
breathe again, and step
hand and hand along the path.

You See Stars That Clear Have Been Dead For Years, But Their Idea Still Lives On.

"All ever see of stars is their old photographs" -Alan Moore

Since I was a little girl, I would look at the sky nearly constantly. At night, in the back seat of my father's car, I would lean way back and crane my neck to look out the rear window in order to trace our location by the way the power lines and the stars crossed one another. My belly would do loops over the hills and I would make up new constellations as we drove along. I always knew we were closer to home when the stars would fade around the edges of my view because of the street lamps glowing on the side of the road. I always felt more and more homesick as this happened because I believed I was leaving my family behind in the sky. Later, when I understood space a little, I knew how true this was and started feel like every star was its own viking funeral.