Track & Field 

Hours and hours pass by
As me and myself sit on the sidelines 
Spectating the main event, the big ordeal - a ceaseless colloquy of all that has passed and all still unseen.
Both positive and negative - our daily requiem. 

Night after night we commune in the stands,
hoping that this time the time will go faster
and she will go slower. 
But it never does and she never will. For she is a champion. 

Welcome to the main event, the big ordeal.
A race that can never really be won. A marathon run by only just one. 
She doesn’t need water, 
Is oblivious to pain. 
Immune to lactic acid and cramping in her leg. 

“Stop!” We try to tell her. 
“Please, you need a break!”
But quitting is not for champions, and that is what she is. 

She bows her head lower and rounds every corner
With more and more vigor, she is the earnest leader. 
We loop through childhood and into adolescence, 
We recall every heartbreak and minor transgression. 
We race toward regret and jump over reprieve, 
We stall only for a moment as she allows us to breathe, 
Before we dive back in and heave toward the end, 
While constantly being reminded that

time 

is 

not 

our 

friend. 

Welcome to the main event, the big ordeal. 
The finish line is now in view. 
But me and myself, we know it’s not true. 
For as long as we’re living, our mind will be running. 

Home

Home is not an easy concept for me. Home is not where the heart is. My heart has been left in so many places. 

Home is hard when home has never been constant. 
When people you want to share it with are no longer with us. 

It’s a story many of us share. 

I grew up bouncing between houses and apartments, cities and states - not enough to never feel permanent, but enough to feel permanent in multiple places at once. 

Home is two sets of lives. 
Home is compartmentalized. 
Home is choosing one at the expense of another. 
Opening the door to one, and closing the other. 
Pleasing the family and friends of one, while abandoning the other. 

At least that’s the story I’ve told myself. 

As an adult, I’ve made a point not to commit to “home.” I’ve sold myself on the idea that by not choosing, by not rooting, the freedom I possess is intentional. 

I’ve told myself that with this freedom, I can leave. 
I can “be” anything I want. 
I can “do” anything I want. 
I can meet anyone I want. 

Serendipitous lives are waiting to be lived. Homes full of meaning and passion are waiting to be inhabited, by me.

But unlived possibilities corrode our soul. 

There’s a delicate difference between goals, and escapism. 
A difference between planning and preparing, and obsessive compulsion. 
A difference between thinking you are going somewhere, when in reality, you exist in a state of stagnation. 

Life lived in your head does not equate to life lived for real.

Waiting for that perfect place does not erase the six and a half years that have passed since I moved back to this state and put my life on pause. 

Life doesn’t stop. 

Home built its walls around me. 

Whether I like it or not. 
Whether I chose it or not. 
Whether I regret it or not. 

This is where I am. 

This is where I sleep. This is where I breathe. This is where I love. This is where I create. This “temporary” has become a larger part of my story. 

So recently, I’ve decided not to fight it. I’ve decided to open to the notion that home could mean right now. That home is not a place, but a state of being. 

Home is not outsourced. 

Home is where I am. 

I’ve grown tired of existing without conviction. 
Of living on two sides of one fence, of watering grass everywhere but where I rest. 

Home is present tense. 

In Between

Growing up was not a dream. 
But it wasn’t a nightmare either. 
It was somewhere in between. 
Like when you smile, but on the inside you’re breaking. 
Like the only thing holding you together is your skin. 
Like when you have a lot to give, but no one is there to do the taking. 
Like the only way through is in.

Child’s Play

We are as two opposing forces in one game of tetherball. 
The closer I come, the further you move. 
Round and round we go, going nowhere at all.
Cemented in place, one string bound by two goals. 

We push and we tug and we pull and we fight, 
We dizzy our minds, preoccupied with finding out who is “right.”
We hurl ourselves into certain exhaustion
And wonder if continuing is really worth it 
Round and round we go,
Until one of us finally releases.

9 Years Later

I wish I had new photos to look at of you. 
The old ones are fine, 
But they’ve lost their spark. 
They’ve sat in the dark 
Crevices of my mind, crevices of the shelf
Crevices of my heart. 
As substitutes for the real you, 
I’ve made them work harder than they were supposed to. 
And now they’re just tired.

Florida 

I miss that day in June, 
Those final bittersweet moments of my last vacation with you. 
Together we stayed back in that hotel room 
Catching up for a while before heading to the pool.
Dad and daughter - just as we used to. 

As our toes dangled amidst chlorinated waters 
You told me you didn't know just how much longer
We’d get a chance to hang out like this. 
Because you were getting older,
And I was getting busier. 
You were right, but neither of us knew it then. 

So instead, we went to get ice cream, 
Did our best to ignore the effects of your pain, 
Meandered through a flea market 
And watched a show about an Arabian 
Love story. 

You bought a bracelet to wear on your wrist, 
A guy sold it to you boasting its healing properties, 
And for the first time I realized just how depleted you were, 
How your suffering robbed you, and you couldn’t carry the world 
Anymore. 

Back in the hotel room, I saw you shed tears, 
Disappointed in knowing just how many years 
You seemed to sense you were about to miss.

Two months later, you finally gave in, 
You left this earth without any clear amends.

So now I can’t help but cling to this vacation
Hold on to your treasures from the flea market as my prized possessions,
Tell myself that you didn’t mean for all of this to happen as it did.

Fault Line

Loving you is like living on a fault line. 
Caught in a perpetual state of what if.
Dancing with the shadows of a memory
Waiting for the inevitable shift.

“Cancelled”

I wanna love people, but sometimes I want to gag.
Seeing grown adults argue about a company’s stand
…On a socially-provocative meme.

Jostled to a point of absolute disgust
They get onto their platforms and begin to blast off
Spewing hate and division with nothing to repercuss
Them of their actions
Except future generations pledging to be nothing like them. 

Everyone thinks they’re so clever and smart.
That they have wit beyond their years,
so woke,
so avant-garde.

My body rejects what my eyes see. My muscles tense and my ears ring.
How do people not believe
That all of *this* does not truly matter.
That there is far, far greater.
That showing up means first going within.
That love always wins.

…

I wanna love people, but sometimes I want to gag.

Skin

On the way to becoming your own woman, 
Inevitably, you will try on different skins.
You will try on different men. 

Some will reach your heart, and some will reach your mind, 
Some will take your body and use it for whatever they define 
As love. 
Sometimes you will get a say, and sometimes you won’t. 

On the way to becoming your own woman, 
Inevitably, there will be lessons. There will be heartbreak and epiphany. 
You will place meaning where meaning shouldn’t be, miss out on the beauty of opportunity. 
Of chance. 
Sometimes you will be able to forget, and sometimes you won’t. 

On the way to becoming your own woman, 
Inevitably, there will be wisdom.
There will be vision. 

One day you’ll realize that your identity is yours to keep, your body, too. 
They can take what they want, but they can never dethrone you. 

For all of your thoughts and all of your words, 
All of your experiences and all of your wounds, 
Develop each rung on the tree of your life, 
Give breath to each note in the song of your life. 
Make way the path to trade dark for light. 
To shed one’s skin in exchange for another, 
To stand firm in yourself and reclaim your innate power.

Crisis

Crisis,

you rise existentially throughout the cycles of my month. 

You swallow me whole with your acidic tongue,

and twist so hard until the breath escapes my body and I wait for morning to come. 

You chew me up and spit me back out, 

discarding a drooping, depleted shell of myself.

You look at me, looking at myself, and tell me my time has come and gone. 

By beauty, fleeted. 

My youth, retreated. 

My potential, evaded. 

My being, wasted. 

You send shockwaves to my core.

Release panic into my bloodstream. 

Despair into my psyche. 

Defeat into my body. 

You grasp my throat and sit on my chest. 

Ooze into my belly, and shrivel my skin. 

You alter my ego and spoil my truth. 

But crisis, 

as strong as you are, please know I am stronger.

Unearthing

I unearth you as I learn myself.

I feel you in the contorted expression on my face.

As it twists and turns with the realities of grief.

I look at you in photographs and notice things I didn’t before.

I create stories where stories probably never were.

Like why your weight was shifted to the right

And what type of seashell was in your hand

I learn you as I unearth my pain.

I see you differently as I get older.

I am now at the age when you became a father.

I consider for the first time your dreams

Before and after you had a daughter.

Your personhood becomes apparent,

I learn that I need to share it,

remember you in remembering me.

Unearthing you as I unearth me.

Countertops

I am not the sponge that soaks up your insecurities.
That sops up your anger
And is respite to your fear.
I am not the sponge.

I am not the sponge that absorbs your expletives.
That takes on your suffering
And is the calm inside your storm.

I am not the sponge that wipes away your vulnerabilities.
That makes herself dirty so you can feel clean.
I am not the sloppy mess of who you think I should be.

I am not the sponge.

Captor in a Victim’s Cloak

I tend to tangle people up in my web. 
Lead them on. Lead them in. 
And once they’re in there, I tend to leave them. 
Let them twist and squirm in desperation. 
Frantically flail amidst the threads of my indecision. 

But I don’t mean to do it, 
It’s just the way I learned to survive. 

Eventually, when I see they’ve stopped struggling, 
Settled in to their new Stockholm setting, 
I feel pity. Guilty. Responsibility. 
The promise of a chase better than the prize, 
An innocent victim no longer able to thrive. 

But soon enough, my web will unravel. 
And all the contents within
the people, the stories, the moments, the memories-
Will cascade to the ground. 
My cocooned victims spiraling out. 

They’ll crash.
And they’ll wake.
And they’ll break
- quite literally - 
Free from their misery. 

Get up and grow new wings. 
Fly to new places and do new things
while I stay the same. 

But, I can’t help that I do it,
it’s just the way I learned to survive.

In My Mind

I haven’t written about you because I don’t know what to say.

In my mind you are here. You are coming back.

In my mind, you never left.

I see your smile, remember your eyes.

Feel the texture of your skin, the roughness of your hands.

In my mind, you sit at the kitchen table.

Bloomberg channel blaring, you, only partially listening, contemplating the meaning of life, or, more likely, humanity’s stupidity.

I watch you watch your wife. Follow your rising chest. Feel those heavy sighs.

But now, I’m grasping to recall the sound of your voice.

I hear it in the distance, but each day it grows more muffled.

Softer.

Quieter.

The opposite of what I remember. It’s fading in and fading out. I can’t recall it like I used to.

In my mind you’re standing across from me, but now you’re fading backward.

Quickly.

Steadily.

You’re becoming a mirage when you used to be my oasis.

The outline of your body blurs. The white of your hair blends in with white of the sky.

Leaving me with no choice now but to create you how I need you, in my mind.

The Framed Floral Print

Why do we insist on enclosing that which yearns to be wild

That which yearns to be free?

Why must we stunt the natural progression of life,

Attempting to capture and memorialize that which we deem

Beautiful now, but dry and wasted later?

Oh, sweet flower arrangement, with your sage-soaked tendrils and delicate tangles cascading the page,

Do you burst with unmet intention to explore beyond your 10x10 space?

Temperature

I had cooled to the core.

Hollowed myself so deeply that there was nothing more 

To give. 

But as I began to warm, 

I began to crack. 

That thin shell around me

Started to break. 

And as it did, slowly,

I relinquished control. 

I threw my hands to the sky,

Surrendered. Let go.