The soft girl whispers in my ear.
I drift each cushion to the foot of the bed and carefully place it off to the side, as if it were made of precious, gold leaf.
I peel back the doona; the sight of a crisp sheet peeking out beyond its triangular puff will never cease to satisfy.
The world runs fast.
I run slow. Smooth. Deep.
Just the way I was made to run.
I see the pace of the world, I do not choose it.
I see me, now.
I choose me, now.
But if you only have eyes
for the way you think life
should
be,
then surely you are forgetting
to live.
To truly live.
As you are.
In this moment, this
version of life that you
so desperately wish
to escape.
If not this moment,
when?
If not under this orange-grey sky,
beneath these sweeping willows, fair,
where?
How do we taste the rain
and know it is good
if we do not open our mouths?
The warm salty promise
of new found life,
calling us home,
asking to grow our bones
in partnership with the sun.
When? Where? How, life?
Now.
Here.
This way, life.
Music brought me undone again, today.
Unravelled. Beautifully. Thoroughly.
And though it’s not a surprise that music can so easily undress my soul, it is often a surprise to feel the way it surges and dances through my body.
How it grabs hold of my belly, my arms, my legs, and drags itself upwards.
How it grounds me. So deeply, so powerfully I could never fly away.
I don’t know why this happens to me.
All I know is that it is profoundly beautiful.
And I’m grateful.
I’m really so far beyond grateful.
Sweet aching quiet.
Soft night, curled up beside me.
I know you.
I know your fragile whispers, well.
How lovely.
The wind of peace.
Here.
Now.
My
how lovely.
The concept of listening to music.
Curious.
Close your eyes.
Where is the music?
Are you listening?
Or is the music
in
you?
You might think the glow of an open heart to be impossible outside the honeymoon phase of romantic love, but I assure you: it’s quite possible. And it is very, very lovely, my goodness.
When I relax into the warmth in my chest, I feel the most beautiful sense of softness and love radiate through me. Especially when I’m listening to music. It’s as though a night light has been switched on in the dark of me, and there I am, ready to hold it out to the world in search of someone to share its glow with.
A physical feeling of heat and light, is the best way I can describe my version of an open heart, and there are not many natural feelings like it at all (apart from the primal urges of childbirth, perhaps, which…actually, I should write a post on that, sometime. Childbirth is often painted for its painful side, but overlooked for the absolute primal miracle it is.)
I’m so terribly unfinished in terms of my emotional healing from the past, but there are some beautiful things going on in my life in the now that I’m grateful for. For the first time in my life I’m happily rising early to do yoga. Every morning. I’ve done it for a week, and I know I won’t stop because I’ve decided it, firmly. It feels far too beautiful to wake my body up in such an earthy way, and it’s linked with the very best part—I’m no longer rushing around and frantic when it comes time to whistle the kids out the door. In itself, that is a small step in the right direction.
It definitely helps that I’ve found the most beautiful, gentle yoga teacher on YouTube. Every time he whispers ‘relax, it’s alright, it’s all good’, it’s like it activates something within my core that knows he is one hundred percent right. That, no matter what, it’s alright, it’s all good.
Anyhow, I just wanted to check in with my real voice and let you all know I’m still here and that, no, I’ve not got a poetry writing robot posting here on my behalf. Although, truly: I’ll be if I know where some of my writing comes from. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: some of the words I write really do not feel like my doing, at all. It’s all very magical and lovely and strange.
I’m happy with magical and lovely and strange, if you are. xx
You may name it what you will.
But the ocean will always smell like
what is beneath the name.
It will always look like
what is beneath the name.
And it will always feel like my very own soul,
(the underside of my name.)
You may name us both what you will.
But the ocean will always be beyond it all.
And so will the deep of me.
Living carefully and beautifully,
I know I am home.
