This Gypsy Happiness

I have been eating healthy,

And drinking plenty of water.

I have reduced my coffee to twice daily

And reduced my sugar intake to one teaspoon with every cup.

I eat smaller meals less frequently than I should.

I have not started running though,

I have a feeling if I start to run now

I will never be able to stop.

And I must not run now.

Not yet, anyways.

I have increased how much I write

And I write therapeutically now.

Whatever eases the heart.

But this hurt goes so deep,

That the mantras of daily living

Has not been enough to get me by.

I carry generations of sorrow;

I carry my missteps.

I am a neon sign to all that sadness embodies

And I am not sure what’s the point to all this.

Not yet, anyways.

I am tired of living these half lives –

One step out the door,

One step chained in.

I am tired of carrying dreams that break innocuously.

Tell me, do you think

That when the sun goes down,

It takes its trauma onto the next day?

Why can I not be the sun?

Why must I be the moon instead

There and always,

Forgetful and forgettable.

Until I am called upon to light the night sky.

Why can I not be enough?

The recipe for making me happy hasn’t been working lately.

I have my fairy lights twinkling down on me,

The balcony open,

And the moonlight filtering in.

I have turned my hourglass upside down,

Starting the timer for happiness to come,

Pulling the strings that make the music box play.

I sit underneath my dream catcher,

As my dreams slip by me.

I keep waiting for happiness to come,

As I push my feet against the ground

And make the swings go high.

Happiness is in these little things,

I have been told.

Look, how meticulously I have carved out the things

That are supposed to make me happy.

So why is it not working?

Happiness is a gypsy:

Who comes and goes as she pleases,

Gets angry when I call her fickle,

And yet hurt when I don’t wait for her.

I don’t know how to do this right,

This waiting I am practicing

Is weighing me down.

This half kept empty promise

That was meant to be broken

Is breaking me down.

For I have never learned

How to let things go.

I am a reservoir of things,

No one wants anymore

But doesn’t know what to do with.

So I am waiting here trying to make sense out of this.

Just so you know,

I haven’t given up yet trying to make sense out of this.

The Art That Is Yours

The art of writing for years
Is that you convince yourself, words matter
You think someday,
Someone will run their fingers over these scrawled phrases
You think, it will open up a door
Or passage leading straight to your heart.
You think these words will save you,
Because someone will read RESCUE
Instead of poems.

My darling, you are wrong.

You never want to be freed.
If you truly wanted help
You would write less in metaphors,
And more in pleas.
Only one person can decipher your conundrums
If only she would put down her pen
And look at the image
Of the girl in her words
She would know,
The only person she has been writing these to
Has been reading them all along.

Through the Innocent Eyes

Last year I wrote this, not knowing how close I would come today to answering it.

Death. I have never experienced death closely. All the people I love are thankfully alive. But sometimes I think how would it feel to know someone I loved died. I am so scared of losing.

Sometimes I think if I see death too closely, I won’t ever be able to love again. I want forever. But in truth, there is no forever at any given time. No one can guarantee that they’ll be with me forever. I am scared once I get used to their presence, I wouldn’t survive their absence. 

To those who die, death is the end. And the start of some sorts. But to others its the middle of something. You don’t want to go on, but it’s your not your end. You can’t start over because nothing has ended for you. You are stuck at this impasse you can’t get out of.

Death’s not about questions or answers. It’s just ultimate and irreversible. So how do people deal will death? How do they find the strength, the hope to go on? I don’t know, I guess I don’t even want to find out. Because once I do, I’ll know for sure how much I have in me to love again.

Today as I sit down to write this, I cannot write with the innocence or the eloquence of the girl who doesn’t know death. Death seems so hauntingly familiar now, no longer a concept I cannot grasp. I do not ask those same questions anymore, because sometimes answering them doesn’t make it any better. I still have been thinking though, how death has changed not just my perspective, but my whole existence.

When someone you know died, the death you are mourning becomes inside of you, as if a part of you had died as well. You can’t rationally explain that death to yourself. You cannot distance yourself from it. It feels like you are carrying a little death inside your body, in your memory and nothing will ever make that part of you live again.

You start to mourn not only for the person who is gone, but for every little thing that is now gone from your life as well. It’s hard to explain to others that you can’t just moved on. Logic like you are alive makes no sense to you. You see death no longer as something incomprehensible, but as something substantial.

Death changes the lives of the people who live in ways the dead do not understand. Death becomes a name, a face, a voice you long to hear. It becomes touch, and memory and all the things you wished you had prayed for. Death is not lying in the grave, it is staring at you everyday in everything you do. There is no getting rid of that feeling, no hiding. It takes away your ability to see the world without fear again. It makes you think you will never trust again.

People tell me, eventually this fades. They say I will smile again, laugh again, enjoy my life again. I do, but one moment, one memory is all it takes to invite that cold, seeping emptiness back into my life. Sometimes, quiet foolishly, I wish I had never written that piece last year, questioning, mocking death. For now death will follow me in every step of my life.

You could have been that girl

Love is of course the best place to start writing

For how can a mere heart hold all that you have to say?

But Love is also the easiest time to stop writing,

You have things to say, but no words anymore.

You grow older,

Replace paper with people

You forget the pen

And pack your favorite lipstick instead

That’s not love for you; that’s life

And you are happy without the words

You are happy not writing about why you no longer believe in love

Happier not trusting others to keep their word

Happy to just exist in moments

Fairy tales are best left at home, under pillow cases

And kisses that curl your toes are tucked away in dreams

You are all grown up now and love is just another expression

And poetry is for people with things to say

And you have concerns of your own

Problems to which there are no solution

Relationships that are more like entanglements

You don’t have time for paper

Paper didn’t heal you then; paper wouldn’t make you believe again

So you forget to hold your thoughts

Time is of essence

And you stop to write, stop to love

It’s time to open your eyes and live again.

One day you get a glimpse from behind the glass window of your car

Of a small cafe by the road

Where young lovers crowd

You see a girl sitting at a table

She’s writing away all her sorrows

You could have just easily been that girl.

But you chose to toss the diary out the window

And walked out of that cafe so along ago

So you sit behind glass windows in cars and to drive to work

And think to yourself, you could have been that girl.