Poetry

bewilder

So often, the problem is not what I think it is.The messy, hurtful miserable thingis not the problem.Pain murmursslow downsit downcome closer and look in.Yes, in here, where you’ve refused to look before.The faceted, shadowy, quivering thing withinmust be heldallowedobservedUntil then, pain will continue visiting,varying form,patiently querying,“now, can you see?”

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Unsaid

No.The word rips up from deep in my chest.Blasting locks off hinges and shackles from the ankles of all the yeses and oksI’ve said when it wasn’t what I really meant.Hot as ice, pounding through my veinswith the power of an entire orchestra composed of timpanisounding a single resonant note. No.

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Create

Sometimes, I don’t know what to say.An idea jumps about,hiding behind a word that is just out of reach,phrases that just won’t turn.It slips out a side door as I step into the room.Maybe, it isn’t the right time.Or maybe,the chase is the point.

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Heartbeat

Underneath the tree of today stands a moment.The moment is blurry.It cannot be sensed fully for if it was it would be either past or future.Now is forever changing.Continuously refreshing and renewing.There is no possibility for now to be stuck or stale,it cannot. Exhale.

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Worried

Though still young, she has lived at least a lifetime’s worth of anxiety before arriving to me.Muscles tense, eyes and ears constantly alert,mind three steps ahead working out how to protect herself.It had long been solely her responsibility to make it through one moment and into the next.Learning to share that burden is a tenuous

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Liminal

There are those moments, days even,when everything outside my skin feels foreign.The splintering shift that happened to me didn’t touch anything else.The grass is still the same green, the coffee maker drips obliviously,the plastic smiles on public faces continue perpetually. I cannot feel the warmth of the late afternoon sun as it kisses my hands,wraps

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Gentle

What would you do if no obstacle stood in your way? What calls to the deepest part of your soul, excites you all the way to the edges of your toes and the ends of your eyelashes?You know the thing, constantly announcing itself with each beat of your heart.Or maybe you have a misty, amorphous

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Fiore

It isn’t your place to judge the movements of the heavens,to forestall the fingers of time as they creep forward,to close the box once it has been openedand she has stumbled back,startled at just how beautiful All of life is.You, dear one, are to breathe.Simply, deeply, without force.For in that ease, is truth.

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Free

When I was younger, I often dreamt that I could fly.Raising then powerfully pushing my arms down would propel me up.Power lines were a nemesis.They seemed to occupy a disproportionate amount of my dream self’s energy.Planning for avoidance, then constantly judging my height to avoid being too high or too low, relative to the danger.Descending,

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Wednesday

On the table- Lego car, tape measure, air pods and a christmas towel.Screwdriver set, tweezers, iPad and two mostly melted candles in crystal holders. Space heater, music playing on a phone, three children shrieking and shoutingdown the hall, a shave ice truck driving by outside in late January. Furniture, lamps and lives, normally housed in

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Silent

Buzzing, rushing, humming. The noise fills my senses when I focus on it.Overwhelming, almost.When my attention is elsewhere the motor of the air purifier is practically silent.Societal expectations are like that.When I center them, parse out what they’re telling me,I notice the heavy weight, the crushing responsibility and the un-winnable gamesmanship of it all.If I’m

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Fundamental

People would like to imagine that they knowhow you should live. Brimming with eagerness they attack your edges: “a little less here”and “a little more here.”An attempt to create sameness,to manipulate agreement.But that won’t deliver what they seek.The only true safety is interior, found inside a deep understanding of the non-necessity of homogeneity anda willingness

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Differentials

Yesterday, we got stuck in the mud.Sank down bad and deep, each effort to move securing us more stiffly in one spot.Emotions rose, tires sank.And then, with a simple twist of the wrist, the differentials were locked and the truck climbed out effortlessly as if there’d never been a problem to ponder.Differential. Difference.One small shift

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Diamonds

Sometimes the moment is just too beautiful.As if I had been existing inside the prisms of a diamond,wondering at the exquisiteness of the reflections around me,overwhelmed with awe at the perfection, the structure, the design.Soaked and soothed in the beauty that surrounded me.Only once it became too much, when the force of all that my

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portland oregon landscape photo by megan cieloha photography

Lean In

When it lifts.When the pressure releases, the fog drifts away, the weight shifts, lean in.When you feel peace speaking, whispering about the edges of your awareness, nibbling at the tight corners of the boxes enclosing you, lean in.When something sparks, catches your imagination, dances in front of you with childish glee, lean in.Lean in so

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