Help me to be honest.
Untie the ghosts in my gut.

I want to learn to breathe with this stone in my stomach. I don’t want to choke on the inhale, I want to exhale and end.

I eye the dent in the fridge, trace the gash in silver and I wonder about wine
i watch you wound another love.

How many times have I tried to make a home here?

My mother carries a dozen names. I collect my own assortment of aliases and addresses, ways to sort the ways I’m known, cue the iteration with incantation.

On the last stoop of summer Akoma tells me I can have what I want. Branden says the same.
Maybe this is just real life. Me at the surface.

I remember tam told me to look up and my strides would be longer.
so I gaze up at the trees and let my legs carry forward.
I float in water and wait for a story to appear in the stars.

This morning I woke to a dead battery.
A spider web across the door to a path…
I don’t want to go back.

But the cycle repeats and here I am again,
in the lightness beyond luteal,
I loop through lopsided love.

The moon tucks behind the earth and invites me into its red,
beckons for an end.

Jasmine says it makes sense
endings make for the best beginnings.
put me in a crowd and I'll make it make sense.
maybe I just crave being a stranger again.

I borrow the voice of a mother like I borrow the language of this father
the medicine machine beeps.
echos remind me of her body so I lather mine in mint.

My ancestors ask me to speak, but i only come when I want
everyone keeps asking! — don’t mention departure, can we just celebrate today?

I think of all the words I could use to tie a bow, make a loop,
wrap around my neck and collar me to a past.

Again I fumble for your name.

You reappear in perfect ending.

I hold onto georgia in search of a memory
I cherish this grief like a jewel
I travel light, an altar in my pocket.
I carry stones to remember all the homes I've had, all the grief I've borrowed
I collect these brick and let the weight tickle my thighs.
Pull me down and make me stay
you could tell me. you could ask.

Maybe one day these stones will break like rivers.
They’ll scratch at the seams of my jeans and tumble in percussion past my knees.
I’ll litter the path in coral, coconut and quartz.
I’ll find myself empty somewhere new.

I return to blank pages and return to the river. I return to ritual.
I mark your anniversaries. Mark departure and arrival and I wonder about return.
I question returning this stone to the water.

Should I put down this stone and barter it for a boulder? Increase the weight so I do not forget what I left behind?
I want to carry this city, this forest, this river, this home with me all the way up the coast.
I would happily bear the burden.

I must be careful or I could spill this all at your feet.
There is a home here I wanted.
I dug myself a hole in the clay and waited for warmth. I waited for her ghosts, waited for the womb to swallow me back in to the earth and show me an ending more radiant than death.

Part of me feels still buried, cozy in my slumber, tickled by the brown loam falling into my ears.
I stir in this slumber, in this portal-like womb, I recognize it’s familiar tomb.
I pull myself in to hide from her, armor myself in unattachment and again I feel inches within my skin. As comfortable as I feel in the dark, the summer light of love pulls me to the surface.

In July the sun sprinkled through the trees, and I lived shaded in illusion.
I danced through collage, painting portraits in the mirror. in parallels I found myself seeping.
Every week at the party I rehearse these memorials in my head.
Now I bask in bright light and temptation burns.
I dig up dirt and plant stone eggs in clay and I wonder about how to hospice a home. How to dream beyond the veil of a dying empire’s grief.

I wonder again about burden.
Wonder if I know how to let myself be held.

But each day I give my weight to the earth.
Each step I oscillate the burden from left to right, careful not to lay too much down at once.
And still earth springs up. Reaches out in flowers and hills — entire forests hug me tight. Crickets tuck me into night.
Each day Earth beckons me: Move. Jump. Fall. Skip. Fall out on the floor.
We can hold your weight and the river can carry your tears.
All of it is welcome dear sister.

Join the Chorus and shake. We have been waiting for your note in the melody. Scream. Shout. Let us hear! We call on your morning.
Rise and shine.
There is a new day for you.