Just Rest

I've begun to visualize the flame and powers within.
Have yet to learn to channel it and use it well.
Good or bad, it's all been cast out for viewing.
Seeking things that seem implausible and impossible,
but I so want them to be true and within grasp.
Intention and mindfulness and specificity,
yet letting it all be and flow through.
That's the aim.
But God does it suck.
Last night I sobbed up against the edge of my bed
on the floor, pressing against it for comfort and touch.
Thinking of the ways I've reached out to others for relief.
Who's to blame?
They didn't know, I didn't know.
I wanted what we all want,
a bit of peace and joy and relief.
I didn't mean to break my own heart or burn down others
along the way.
Didn't know the power, the value,
the need to be with myself and be indifferent.
Attachment is the root of suffering.
I think about that again and again.
I've attached so anxiously, so preoccupied
with others and things outside my realm.
I didn't know, I swear I didn't know.
Turning new leaves, left and right, here and there.
Finding ways to release the anger and the bitter.
Remembering why I grew out my hair, my mane.
Recalling my name: Alexandria.
Mom always said I was a wonder of the world, the library.
She was burned down and with it, knowledge and potential lost.
I don't want to burn myself more than other circumstances have.
Control what we can, leave the rest.
Do not focus on the rest. Just rest.

About Your Dreams

There's nothing to say.
I don't need to know about your dreams.
I'm too busy listening to new Courtney Barnett
and doing my work.
The work that was unearthed though the process
that we were.
And the work that pays the bills.

I said what I said and meant what I meant.
Please leave me be.
When I had things to say, you chose your path.
Doesn't she give you what you want?
Was it worth the times and times and time again,
you insisted it wasn't true?
It was nothing more, nothing less.

The cat and I are just fucking fine.
The truth stings, don't it?
We aren't part of your life and you aren't part of me.
Leave it be, let it die.
I was never yours, you never mine.
Goodbye, ok?
Goodbye.
Let it go, let it be.

I'm no longer that person.
The walls are now up for a reason,
the shields activated and no longer entertaining
the games or lies or however, inadvertent scars and scraps.
For me, it's now just about me.
The thoughts of you, I just say thank you and goodbye.
Faded and jaded,
I can't even think of you
without desecrated memories.

Now coming into my own,
the lie that we were just isn't of comfort anymore.
Is this now what you wanted?
Is your heart filled to the brim, all dreams fulfilled?
It doesn't matter either way.
I'm here, you're there
and the only one I need to worry about
is this lovely lady right here.

Your ego or guilt or whatever it is--isn't my problem,
stop dropping me messages and talks of cats.
What's done is done.
I take the lessons you left at my feet
and I use them and dig down and grow some more.
Thanks for that, but now it's all gone.
Please leave me.
Just leave me.
be.

This Battle for Gold

I got a new battery.
Charged up to battle,
battle through my battle of Waterloo.
This pivotal time from which there is no return.
The heel of Achilles.
I see it, breathe it, feel it.
Feel it to overwhelm,
sob and soothe and gather to fabrics of my skirt.

Find comfort through myself.
You did it to survive, you learned to make the most of it.
Insecure and anxious is the classification I've read,
maybe so, maybe yes.

Just like the election, it's less effective to exercise the demons
if you don't see them clearly.
They are now before me,
clamoring and cawing,
demanding ME me, ME.
Feed me, see me, save me.

In that stage of starving them out,
detoxing not just from you, but from all the fantasy and mayhem.
Unlearning and re-educating,
tracing new paths and seeking new maps.
What's easy for some, isn't for others.

There are such moments of strength and confidence.
Confident this is the path,
this damn rocky path
is the only one I want. I need.
Needed it since ages ago,
better at 30 than another year even later.

Getting reunified with this soul, these lungs, this brain-heart.
To spend less of it talking out and more reflecting, writing,
captivated and analyzing.
Giving myself all the time I've always deserved.
I'm right here with you, I'm not going anywhere.
I say it and repeat it and mean it.
Never again. I will never leave you.

You are strong and so beautiful and hard and soft
and gloriously messy and put together.
A painting all my own,
a story and another story told and retold.
Perhaps seeing myself in ways for the first time,
sometimes so lovely I can't look away.

Learning to love
yourself.
The path is so rife with cliche and distraction,
misdirection and false hopes.
As known from many attempts before,
even when the path isn't clear
I know the destination.
The gold at the end, I know what it might hold.
or I can sometimes pretend and aim to know.

Up these rocks I go, I go.
Challenging addictions and realities
that once and often feel so real,
so unshakable.
On my skin, in this being.
No one or thing to be angry with.

I sit next to and work through these pains carried
by generation to generation, from year to year.
Feeling it and feeling it and doing it well.
The best I can hope for,
the only path I claim and name and desire
even with the overwhelming strain on what I know,
thought I wanted, needed, craved.
I want me. Contentment, free and easy.
No fear, no concerns of who you are or what that makes me,
to have loved and lost.
It doesn't much matter now.
I'm too busy climbing and maybe some day I will go skydiving.

Bead Beyond Bead

I don't like this feeling.
It's uncomfortable as all hell.
The shell(s) are cracking.
I'm trying to stay in my own business.
Examining attachment style and jealousies and insecurities.

Things I'm not supposed to mention
or entertain.
I'm entertaining them and grilling them with questions,
inquiries. Why do you exist? Why do you manifest in that way?
I think about crushes and what it means to be me and free.
Romantically, to not need another.
To hold hands with that little girl.
Re-brand the pains I've known,
the stories I've told
again and again to myself.
To anyone who might listen.
I'm this, I'm that.
Steadfast and stuck.

Getting unstuck is uncomfortable,
being real with myself about what feels non-glamorous.
Channeling that energy I'm most drawn to,
that person I want to attract.
Become what you want to have nearest to you.

Thinking about what drove us apart, what led you astray.
That it happened because it was meant to,
maybe should have unfolded much sooner.
Lost myself in you, in the fantasies of whatever I thought it was,
wanted it to be. Not reality.

Saying this for myself, but as a reminder to all of the struggle
to exist and be in this world and not get lost in it all.
Life is suffering, they said.
I get it now. It's not funny, but sometimes it can be.

I look at the rolls coming over my panty strap and smile,
feel grateful for these lungs and legs and life force.
Spent minutes upon minutes thinking through intentions and
moving bead beyond bead.

Today didn't unwind how I thought and hoped it might,
but I rested and breathed and worked through these blasted insecurities.
A step closer to whom I hope to be.
The hurt that comes out through the healing,
patience is required.

It's hard to believe sometimes that living can be this hard,
for all the moments I took for granted and didn't have to think
through each moment and breath.
Now I feel each step and ache and trauma and memory.
Working and working and working with it and straight through it.
Laughing as I cry and living as I die.

Words maybe can never mean much,
but they are all we have to leverage and share and compare
the dire and lovely means of existence.
I hope you see this and remember you aren't alone.
Even if what is here doesn't make sense,
you can write what you know to be truth.
Eat and breathe and make the most of this day and time.
Goodnight, moon. Goodnight to you.
To tomorrow, another day.

The Conductress

I road the train.

A journey, a long needed trip.
Alone, I took it alone,
though I gathered companions along the way.
Ate sweet potatoes in creamed spinach
took video of the plateaus and dusty, forlorn spaces.

Slept and snored and still was labeled a beauty.
Seeing the rapture in a stranger's eyes as they listen
to me. Just talk. Just share and walk
and wonder and ask them what they know.
This is how conversations go, I'd forgotten.
The give and take and on and off of it.

Through us I had learned to regret such important pieces
of who I am, what makes me ME.
Me, Alexandria. That girl woman you once adored.
Strapped your heart to.
I lashed mine on, too. Tis true.
To the train; watched it travel and rumble on through.
Green green, go. You can pass through.

When it derailed, it was simply picked up and placed back.
No need to talk about why it ran through.
That was wrong, you see.
When things get wonky, it's valuable to work it through.
Take note of the lessons and commit to starting anew.
Maybe you did, maybe we did.

Ignored the damn signs.
The red flags looked pink and blurry. Thought it was my heart exploding aloud,
screaming YES, yes, pick me, Mr. Conductor.
That train we were on.
Forgot I am my own Captain, too. Call the shots, map the routes.
Avoid the snow and deer and elk and buffalo.
The branches and other trains and broken tracks.
I lost sight of the horizon, of the mountains I was headed to.

But now, the clouds have parted.
It might still be misty,
but I've never been leery of dew.
Some times you have to rest a while, keep the brakes on.
Steady the cars and revel in the view.

Not quite broken, not exactly mended
but on my way all the same.
Chugging along and singing a song.
I still dance, too. No strain in my step.

And not that it matters, but others see it.
Compliment the coverings and proclamations
that I am. The Conductress I am now.
Before you. Driving this train of mine through and through.
Can you believe it, my dear?
Surviving and thriving and 30.
Me. Me! Who'd a thunk it?

Perhaps it's a silly rhyme to make and maybe it is,
but not each note will hit just right.
The poetry it flows and flows.
And this train,
on it I go.
I am, I am. On this train.
All by myself, you see?

The journey, the journey. This map is taking me home.
To who I am, who I will be.
I can't look back, can't give you attention or answers, you see?
Don't try to reach me.
I'm on a trip, on a train.
Different directions, maybe. No longer shared connections.
Goodbye, beloved, goodbye.
All aboard, all aboard. Just not you.
There's room only for one.
To converse and roll on and be free as a mother*ucker. Free.

My Queen, my Dear Beloved

I suppose it's true, these steps matter.
Day by day, working facet through facet.
These new shoes remind me that times change,
we grow and morph
into a new version of ourselves.
Harder to remember who I used to be.
Maybe it's for the best.
Not you, not anyone will ever really see me.
The real me.
The perceived me.
One in the same, impossible to discern.
Leos want to be worshiped, I've read.
Keeping ego in relative check,
while realizing it's ok to want to be seen.
There was a time I was called something special.
A special friend.
A lady, once.
That day at the museum, I was taken aback
at the idea of putting our names in a heart.
Didn't feel real, no it couldn't be.
Let that moment chisel into my being,
direct me more to you.
Wanted to be in the eyes of you.
Beholden to you.
Maybe we are the fools, at times.
Perhaps lucky to have had the chance to become one.
Maybe we're all fools, any way.
This dragon, this beast that is love.
We never really get taught to tame it,
certainly not before. Only during or in looking back.
It must be free,
cannot be tethered or ensnared.
You cannot claim it in fear,
demand it be more or less than it is.
The love is the love and it grows as it grows,
til the day it waxes and fades.
Worry not, my dear beloved.
My Queen, my Queen.
This love, right here.
Harness it and caress it and grow it
for the rest of your years.
Keep it close, keep it safe.
Don't forget again this lesson that you are enough.
Don't need the love of another to be worth a darn or a damn.
All of the darns and damns
couldn't even save you from yourself.
No one could, you know it's true.
The love you need most, the one that could ever be most true.
Put your hand on your chest,
breathe in and out, out and in.
It's there. Let us learn to know it
and grow it and strengthen it's roots.
Tall and proud.
I love you, Queen. I'll never leave you.
Please don't leave me.