Between the Ink, the Page and Me

There are seasons full of darkness that feel like the absolute worst of times, dark fairy tales where you’re called once again to fight. Despite a heavy heart — you lift your head up and sigh, you sharpen your teeth like a vampire in the night, thirsty for blood and allergic to light. Wondering, what will become of your dreams deferred — as they lay lonely in beds made for the brokenhearted. You hold on in between breaths of this life — for another season to teach you how to walk on sunshine.

I was born on a Friday, under a Pisces Moon on the 65th day of a leap year. I fell from the sky straight into the Sea, with a map of the stars on my back and a chest full of watered sunflower seeds.

According to astronomers — that was in the Winter season, but the weatherman calls it Spring. My serenity sits somewhere between a sunset and a full Moon.

My first born son was born on a Friday, on the 39th day of a leap year. He fell through the air straight in between two of my heartbeats — and broke me open. That was the first time I fell in love. An Aquarius bearing water, he’s been pouring life into me ever since.

I’m still picking up the pieces from the last time I fell in love. You, were 45 minutes late for our first date. You showed up with a 100 watt smile and an apology on a dark day — and I foolishly gave all my power away. I don’t recommend falling whilst you’re freshly grieving and barely breathing. Perhaps, we should stop calling that love.

At eighteen, I encountered my first heartbreak — when grandpa Gabriel was so swiftly taken away. I had never known a love like that, a fathers love — a wonderful gift I had lacked. I will look for him again next lifetime. Until then, I throw wishes in wells in the hope that I can be everything he was to me.

Rebuilding from what has been broken inside, is a lonely but necessary ride. I’ve been sleeping with enemies called self sabotage, self doubt, my ego and its pride for far too long. Anger seemed easier to hold onto every night, I was too willing to wield its arms at the grief it masked behind my eyes.

Everyday, I’m chanced to reclaim this body as mine. ‘The first revolution is when you change your mind’ said the Poet — Gil Scott Heron, and he wasn’t lying.

The stories of my life, they find new homes outside my mind on blank pages that freeze any given time, I close my eyes, I bleed all night, I tug the sky, I ache inside, I testify, the ground and I — we do collide, it’s no surprise. Everybody tries to heal from life.

Humans are like windows and mirrors. We take in the view, we step inside — We watch the world spinning by. We dream on, I reach out and touch you — to connect with your mind. I can’t fix you the way that you need or hold back the rivers and the storms in your eyes, but maybe we can leave each other less empty — when we stand side by side.

I spill ink when life gets in between you and I. When I can’t keep you close to me, and my roars become echoes of distant screams. I know, anything short of loving, really is a waste of time.

I have been less than loving — so, so many times. Caught up battling a Sea of emotions, I lose sight. Yeah, I’m nice — but nice is just a four letter word, not a verb that I live all of the time. These internal earthquakes disturb waves of concentrated thinking — and I fall through the cracks in between.

Awake or asleep, now I’m alive and destined to die another day. Not before my time I will elevate, leaving this dimension for ancestral planes.

In the meantime, whilst my heartbeats are still racing — I need holy water. I need endless Summers south of the equator. I need the stars beneath my feet. I need my faith restored enough to make a home of the unknown and its sweet little mysteries — ‘I dwell in possibility.’ Let Poetry lead my Prose. I need to rebuild my love, line by line — piece by piece.

I need to remember — I’m Fridays child, loving and giving even when between rocks and hard places — I’m a woman soft and strong and still growing. Learning to walk the light, with a dark and bright and wild side, built for all seasons.