If I am not her,
that good and lovely girl in a box,
who am I?
Now that this body is alive
with the energy of all of life,
who am I?
I believe this,
but I believe the opposite of this, too.
I love you desperately,
I hate you just as achingly.
Both can exist within, but how?
But how?
I am bursting fire,
I am calm ocean blue.
I do not understand, and I understand entirely.
For one small me,
these feelings are large.
Too large for me to carry
alone.
I couldn’t possibly know who I am.
I’m so many things, places, people, feelings: it would be impossible to really say.
Who I am, that is.
The question of who I want to become also seems pointless.
I want to become whoever I become.
I want to feel, and know, and see life from every angle—
to chase the wind as it takes me.
Who I am now is soft,
is gentle,
is wild,
is alive,
is both free and caged,
all at the same time.
The wind of me never stops at one station, only.
I am a woman; passionate, creative, strange.
A woman.
Beautiful, kind, ugly, horrible.
I couldn’t possibly know who I am;
I never stay the same.
I never will stay the same.
It’s a strange sort of beautiful, this life.
I’ve followed the breadcrumbs, even the ones I knew would blow up my world. (They blew it up: into a million pieces of possibility. Beautiful possibility, for everyone around me.)
I have been lost. I have been ecstasy.
I have been right when I thought I was wrong, and wrong when I thought I was right.
I have been in love—my goodness, I have been in love—and I have been broken, and I have been dirty, and I have been changed.
This whole life long, I thought I was one thing.
I never have been one thing. I have been a starburst of infinity.
Always.
And now I see her rise, this girl, to this woman inside me— how she soars with the swell of abundant life.
From the ashes, she flies. Out of the haze. At least for today.
There will be new love in this shining place. I’ll see it with my heart, I’ll know it with my soul.
There will be friendship built on truth and depth and eternity.
There will be a roaring spirit, in the place where magic lives.
And there will be you.
Always, there will be you, my friends.
I stopped
and I said to myself:
I am in pain.
I did not try to hide it.
Or justify its reasons.
I did not try to pretend
the hurting wasn’t there,
or as true as it truly was to me.
For a moment I looked around
for the escape I’d always looked for.
The rug to hide all the knowing beneath.
The rug of make believe: the chance
to believe that the pain did not exist.
But it did.
It lived in my heart.
And though I wanted it to leave…
I let it be.
And I knew it was okay
not to shine it away
with my sun.
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