.painted.postcards.

Flight

I’m a little paralyzed, I say. Which is not always a bad thing. A lack of movement for a moment can bring perspective. 

At the peace and zen center he asks, should I follow you? Which is followed by a discussion of how he is a healer and how her spirit is missed as it journeys down the coast of south america.

A break down
Leads to little love
Little caring
From places that deserve it
A hand shake at the end
A joke
Who am I that I let myself break so easily?
Not a mirror. Not a window. 
A blood pumping artery?
All I want to do is spill thick red paint.
And hold your hand under the palm trees as we shiver. 
As we face our fight or flight instincts together. 

ready

standing on my own 2 feet

proud of the person I am

proud of my decisions 

happy

I have $5.03 in the bank. But I am richer than I have ever been.

Ready: to be myself completely. 

I am my most favorite person in the whole entire world to hang out with. 

warrior childs

march first
march forward
march into federal budget cuts
march into new housing situations
march into march

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how we cuddle, 
when no one else is around.
How she said
you’re not like me,
because of your extreme friendly.
How I have made you fell safe,
meeting people .
How I tend to bring that out
in my furry, four legged companions. 

===========================

I jump up and down

every time I make it

into your poems. 

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

how the ratio of 1/3 
Native American Womyn 
are raped in their lives
makes me feel included.
knowing in my family,
3/3 generations 
of Native Womyn
have become warriors
through this pain.

the urge
to drop everything
and take u and i
to Thailand.
The complexities that you are
are so rich
I want to hold you up
but I have to hold myself up first. 

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

This is what parents must feel like, 
I say out loud, 
when their kids do something amazing
like figure out the rules of language and breath. 
Seeing her fingers holding thread
gently
wondering if I have taught her more yet,
then how to sew. 

——

rent math again
scramble scramble scramble
I am breakfast, an omelet of poor. 

keeping safe a secret,
secretly longing for safe.
I am safe, I tell myself.
I know that I do not feel it.  

(__)___ed/

we sit at the table;
pool in backyard.
chula vista home.
He doesnt want to ask me questions about me,
thats not what this hour is about.
its about dividing polynomials,
except I soon realize he can’t subtract when borrowing.
and I think,
about:
the elementary teachers
that imagined he would learn how someday,
or worse (never noticed).
and all the people around him who know this trick
that have never bothered to teach him it. 
We make 0’s into 9’s and 9’s into 8’s. 
And me, 
remembering his age for myself

full of time that is blacked out, 
full of space that did not have a swimming pool out back, 
full of unasked for breast growth accompanied by attention unwanted
remembering this age for myself being full of knowing how to subtract, 
I realize a new axis
of priviledge.
that knowledge can be gifted in a way gender and money and breasts can not be (ab)used/
that we can teach each other and we know more than we ever could have imagined. 

sentances

These are fresh off the press

the sentence “my ears are red”, when visiting the border for the first time since it was crossed as the butterfly swims

the words “they are roses” about those powerful enough to stand tall in a city that tries to sweep their bodies under the rug

A standing under bridge, being asked to be the teller of the park story. How do I explain that every time I am here, I am haunted by ghosts. That I wanted to say, this is near where my brothers body hit the sand from up there. How painted murals don’t even start to cover up the fact that this city was built to isolate us. And not to blame the city, or take for granted the empowerment of these paintings, but to ask instead to tear down the concrete and socially created structures that are still holding our communities down.  

All of this weather beneath the storm. 

All of this the sexy that is in my body regardless of the price of my chones. 

My walk of fear, once done in a safe place, recognized in exact detail to that of those around me. The knowing that I am not alone in the quick glances, the shoulders raised high stances. The ready fists in pockets. And the seeing that as I take this task seriously, it means I am ready to move past this walk. To move with open arms and unclenched teeth. To embrace life unafraid of what it will bring to me.

I have learned that you can not control anyone else, you can only control yourself.
To be in control so that when told to be afraid, you are not.
so that when told to hold back love, you will not. 
so that as a spirit, you are free regardless. I am free regardless. 

We are all criminals. Why is it more ok to steal love without returning it then to steal bread? How can a piece of paper be used to define our humanness?  Where do we draw the line of people drawing lines and then building walls and fences and malls and subliminal messages? 

There should be a dramatic ending here. It feels strong and valid until this point. But the drama continues, it does not end. This is an unfinished story. You will have to write the rest. I want you to be the best parts of the future. I want your movements to grow well past mine. You are strong and worthy, and you are alive. The choice for the next words are yours, not mine. I am not walking scared and I believe in both of our power to grow however it goes.

the scars that stick

I want to watch all the Rihanna music videos in a row. Starting with the one where she teaches me to be a friend from under an umberella. I want to fall apart while glueing back together my pandora radio station. I want to lay on the floor under the bed where I held you close, listening to tripplet patterns, which are always the best to clap in music theory class.

This pushed space finds me floating back into shopping carts where I use my food stamps to jump through hoops and I want, sometimes, to bring all of the bags of freshly made tortillas and hand squeezed salsa outside of the Pancho Villa gorcery store and give them to the men waiting for work in the parking lot. And it was not until I traveled the bus routes of this town to the border for an extended period of time that I learned that the spot they are waiting for work in is a 2 hour bus ride from the otra lado, meaning we can all just hop on a bus at any time and walk through an unpoliced border exit while whistleing to those trying to get in the other way. And I remember the shock of seeing armed guards with shotguns ready at all grocery stores in El Salvador. And I remember the learning that this is normal. I want to steal all the plants that are being suffocated in nurseries, enslaved to soil that does not nourish their roots the way it should. I want to meet all of my friends and family as well as every person I have ever met at the border where you cant help but face your own separations.

I sat in the rocking chair and told my father that I’ve been sad and he told me that he’s not surprised. And we talked about the scars that stick to our bodies, how people think there is a time when wounds heal and how instead there is a day where you decide to keep going through the pain and that for some of us that day happens every time the sun rises. 

Your beauty falls from your fingertips. It flows like gold yearns in mountain streams, untouched by man. Your joy is a shine of morning dew on spider webs, felt best by breath that is crisp and crunches as it hits fresh and pure snow. And all the ants of the world are collecting items to lay down at your shrine above their mound pile dunes as we speak. I want to hold onto your spirit as if I could tame the energy that falls from the sun onto my skin, which can only be found in the small moments where I am not trying to touch it. 

Someone told me recently that, due to hormones and science facts, the relationships we have as teenage lovers are the strongest ones we will ever feel. And I would like to stand up to spitting in the face of that and argue, instead, that we learn somehow to keep ourselves from falling as deep as we did the first time. That we build borders and walls and tell ourselves we are safe on one side. We forget that, even without buses or cars or trolleys or trains, at any moment we could decide to turn our bodies the opposite way and spend our time walking to the other side of oceans. And in this world of movement and change and stillness and stingers, that love is the only thing that really matters in the end. 

home for the holidays

it happened to me
this year
that I was home for the holidays
This means
at times I was alone
the emptiness of my past home meeting me in the present
It means
at times I was with
my genetic family at my house for the first time ever
taking a 2 day traveling adventure to visit with my extended family for just 24 hours
And when coming home
I felt the coming homeness
In a way I havent before
The feeling that there is a space for me here
a space that only my blood and guts can fill
and an argument where I said outloud for the first time
that what we have in the present is what it is, is not re-definable after the fact.
this present I have right now 
this homeness
is appreciated
is beautifulness.

At the edge of the world
there are children crying
because they lost their jackets
and are freezing to death.
We are monsters 
near the end of october,
we are mothers
when teeth are scratched;
the place in complacancy
the hopscotch on the wall,
these dragon balls magic
of weathered un-haunted halls. 
schools of birds swarm under mountains
thick with goblin hobbit malls. 
we are the homes to their children 
like the roofs are homes to their balls.