radial blooming -

Last night I did something that when initially envisioned, scared the living shit out of me. And I did it with grace, ease and zeal and authenticity. No one tells you how scary it is to share your truth, your journey and the path with which you have walked.


Sure it’s easy to elucidate emotional realities through art - it’s what my life’s passion is. To capture the singular effect that is “anger” or “joy” or “passion”. It’s easy. But baring yourself - like unhinging your ribs apart and letting yourself bleed all over the furniture. It sounds poetic and is. But you live it and part of it stings. Burns up your core and incinerates the lies you tell yourself to keep yourself subtle, sane and small.


Honesty is beautiful. It’s real. Visceral, a word I use often and alive. The exaltation is not without work. In other words, you don’t get to make it to the top of the mountain without getting scraped. And maybe this journey will pick at old scabs and tender, blue bruises that never fully healed. We climb, anyways.


There’s a reason why intrepidness isn’t just a brand, but a way of life. It’s more than just a title, it is my swan song. The tune I sing as I climb the ladder of Being. And last night, smiling and laughing among friends, it dawned on me that the view from the mountain top is without a doubt, worth the climb to get here.

september.

I been getting higher more, feeding myself in ways i never even thought i was hungry for. I have been speaking from the undercurrent of my soul more. Letting my eyes linger for longer and allowing myself to dip from spaces when I need to. Growing and being is clumsy and so raw. Something about the rush of blood to my head and hearing the sound of my own heart beat reveals currants of possibility to me. I am always talking about what could be which possibly makes me seem distant. but I revel, often at what we’re doing here. they don’t call it an orchestration for nothing and forgive me for being curt but ain’t we some fly ass mother fuckers? just out here, battling against the cries of apathy. being as much as we can be. it gladdens me. that is one of the ways i feed myself; residual joy; like spooning the last bit of honey into your cup before heading off to get more. i like to see a smile and crowds of em. i like to think that’s how we call this whole thing off - by just declaring ourselves enough right where we stand. no fanfare, just a harmony of sovereignty floating seventy thousand feet above the atmosphere. yeah, that’s how i picture it. me and you rolling into the sunset with our hearts upon our sleeves - with nowhere to go and yet, everything to be.

A momentary mingling.

I turn my head thinking the clock reads 7:77pm - a trick of the eye gate.The temperature sits comfortably at 77 degrees and the time actually reads 7:07. The wood grain of my old Toyota is scratched and worn and I start to recall every tick and nick on the body of this dashboard. I sway into nostalgia for a time not too long ago when the smile on my face was of a permanent hue at the thought of your name … it’s a wonder how a few words can make wild what was once tame. In my heart lives a tenderness for those I’ve loved true, names I’ve called while in this very car and the stories we’ve told each other. It’s quite a pain to miss what was so fresh and yet a clean slate was what was best. As my fingers trace my rose colored lighter, I wonder what causes the residue to stain the insides of a heart? In all it’s gold and emerald glory, what causes an uproaring of bad blood and an even worse attitude to tear away what is nourishing and holy? I’ll never ever understand. And as I sit, skin balmy under the humid moonlight I waft into another place: a silent innerstsnding, that what once will never be. but what is coming gallops to me, and in a greater form — you will never lose when you shine in the glory of all that you’ve been shown.

3:33am

Laying awake, I stare up into the popcorn ceiling as a red light hums quietly against the maroon colored walls. And in my throat lives a lump the size of my fist; it’s harder to swallow and my hands are glistening with sweat. And as I feel into the grooves of the mattress against my spine and the many pillows lining my body, a wonder brushes past my eyelids; as delicate as a betrodden exhale, the kind our bodies release at the embrace of our beloved. The ‘finally’ sigh. This brush of air breezes in language that speaks of a new chapter. It sweeps in with it a tiny little stirring and I pull the covers closer to me. Giddy and mixy and terribly afraid of what’s coming next. And as my jaw clenches tighter, I remember the many times my feet touched fertile soil. I recall how my soles become dampened by dewy blades of grass decorated with condensation from the night before. With this teensy breath, all of a sudden I feel weightlessness that carries me to a time were what was over the horizon did not scald the insides of these eyelids like this. Change can access a Nirvana when keyed into it right. Bliss, with calibrated vision. & I keep seeing the red light from the inside of my closed eyes. And my body suddenly gets heavier as sleep comes nearer. A needed relief or welcomed distraction; for a moment, when these heavier thoughts suspend I’ll find a smile or two lulling into a slumber to help me forget what I hate to remember.

ruby red.

you rouse me. whirling colors in a radial spiral, you beam in many different directions - I have always liked my men tall with a soul flattened in a Great surrender. performing a prophecy by how he walks, plummeting towards destiny. labored talks and a drawl that tells me time only escapes me when I let it. a lisp that sounds like the crackle you hear when the record scratches, signaling a classic. you are a classic. and I can’t find a sliver of will in me that wants to hold you down. instead, everything in me desires to uplift you. inspire you and raise your degree as it were decreed. just for a minute, if you’ll let me.

the ground ate my crystal.

I fed the famished ground a crystal

under a tree that lives behind my home.

This is no allegory

Nor is this a metaphor

But a retelling, a narration

of how what lives

is beyond what we believe life to be.

These successions and crying out

Isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

So on that sweltering summer day

When the ground swallowed up

The Malachite I gave to a friend

And I dug and dug to find it again,

I heard a whisper from a cloud

Confessing that the soil was asking for me.

And in the many days I sat silently under this tree

Helped it form a kinship with me.

So when that very friend gifted me

that forgotten luminous green stone

thickened with speckles

the tree living in my backyard back home

lined with its vigorous soil, rejoiced.

And swallowed up that jade emblem, whole.

vocal chords.

tears of joy overflow and in my heart lives an echo I wish I could muffle. an echo so bright that it blinds me as I wake in the mornings. I send out letters into a doomed sea. and into that sea I throw these bottles filled with scrap papers, scribbled with prayers and hymnals from deep within the recess of my soul. and in these songs sit the hefty parts of me. parts that have never known softness and only sing jagged notes that cut up your kneecaps just from hearing them. songs sung purely out of hope, music born out of a desire. a desire that raged and rolled in me to be heard by The One I loved, most. The one with ears for my confessions. And hands for my innards. The one who lives gently placed over the space in my heart. The one who is closer to me than my own jugular. I vow forever to sing my tunes to you, as if this love in me is a well, never running dry.

how naive. 

did I know that one day, I would grow and that my enthusiasm would fade? The verses suddenly turned flat and I began singing in keys that were short, stifled and mingled with a scent of betrayal. my beloved lost the taste for my voice. I was sure of it and that rancid sea no longer flowed your love back to me. indeed it was doomed from the beginning, a whisper tells me. this sea, my letters and all the faith in the world could not convince me that the ocean was not swallowing up my insides. Becoming deaf to the tune of your love, I wanted to give up. Love like this is eternal and it will never fade. To the heart of a believer, this is an indisputable fact though all of me quaked with denial. 

My grandmother etched something into my soul when I was a child - that two steps towards the One warrants a love that rushes back, fifty-fold. 

And now the tears that stain my cheeks burn because I know You. I know where you reside and how deep in me you live. How you stretch over my body and call it Home. I know you so deeply that to house doubt would be a disservice to all the love you have revealed in me. tadakhar//maktuub … you were never silent from me but taught me what tune to listen for. refined my ear and showed me how frivolous love letters are when ultimately, you have never left me. you, as the everlasting breath in my body and me as the canvas with which you varnish - a love affair I would do nothing to rid myself of. 

I sing, again.

allowing my body and bodies to feel a liberation so foreign puts a move on my heart. and it’s the freedom to feel, the freedom to bellow and burn from within. the freedom to be pained. the freedom to rise from that very pain like a Phoenix. the freedom to learn from the pain and fall in love with the sanctity of feeling good. the freedom to feel good. the freedom to walk out on a limb for yourself and call it grace or an awakening but the freedom to self-care yourself right into sovereignty, making your very existence a service, do you hear me? the freedom to declare eons worth of medicine and healing as a mechanism to unchain your heart. you are the remedy. the freedom to soften. the freedom to know the expression of this body, though a temporal resting place, is a temple.. a sanctuary. a freedom to lick the insides of your mouth for the right flavor of truth. dig and find freedom so foreign, it puts a move on your heart. 

almost.

our feet gave off heavenly hums of heat. holding hands, we swept up every bit of joy and named it after one another. you were my keepsake and me? your amulet. a couple of good luck charms in the flesh. and lord knows we refused to entertain coincidence. through us, we learned the weight of a hand in good faith. we taught each other to speak up straight, like God was listening. there was a bellow when we met. lightening striking a million wombs, I think we may have even frightened Karma. Or at least kept it at bay. the power of two hearts in an endless sway, making a new day, every day. we tasted freedom the same, music sat in our mouths identically. a twin to me. euphoria was the flavor of our nostalgia and we spun around for so long that we almost became timeless. we almost became perfect. squinting, we almost saw the lining, glistening in gold; dripping onto the mantle of our souls. 

Texts I Never Sent.

‪When you hear the blue jays singing close to midnight won’t you think of me? In the thick of nostalgia somewhere halfway between your deepest desires and a quarter past 11, you start to feel a tugging at your heart. Hearing a call you cannot deny yet somehow are unable to answer. It all sinks into you. Suddenly seeing into a darkness which tunnels you right into my lap; your walk sings to me in its pace. I carve out a special place in my heart for the beating of yours and this is all to formulate language, saying: I am grateful to know you. I gladly follow the beat of your drum … do you hear how melodic we sound? How we sway and drip with hymns from our fingertips? Do you see how we are the color Gold, bottled up in flesh? There is no likeness like you and this makes me like you. There … I said it. I like you. ‬

2am.

‪Look back, forward and within — in all radial directions. Will your vision to your past and kiss the feet of those who walked before you. Bless their journey and their souls. Direct your vision to where you will catapult. Fling yourself with no avail, heart cavity open, and plummet towards your endless forever. Carve the newer spaces through the sheer power of your focus. And then settle, settle slowly and softly to the inner vision, the now-mindedness and look around you. Let the air waft through your finger tips and savor the flavor of right now. And right now. And right now.‬

Composed at 5:55am.

What is a breakdown without a breakthrough? Who would’ve thought that simultaneously as all fell apart and I took the last of my gasping breaths after all the crying that a piece of paradise was on the other side of utter hopelessness?



I feel as though life has taken a chisel to the hardened edges of my heart and given me an ultimatum. One where we promise each other things I would never dare repeat but I wonder — after the pinky swear was over — if there’s a place in our hearts that is opened when we find ourselves without someone who was once a dear companion?


Someone once said that a heart break and heart opening can be the same thing depending on who is listening.



One day in the near nowness, I will look back with wise and sweet fondness to connect dots I cannot see. Someday this will be an elegy; my own personal swan song and I’ll look back, held up by a strengthening nostalgia.



One day sooner, I will continue collecting gems on this path, looking up at a teal stained sky and I’ll wonder about the girl who cried wolf so much so, she became one.

2019.

‪When the concept of coincidence erodes, all that’s left is synchronicity. Life’s melody bellows and you can’t help but believe in the magic. The miracle. The softest place. The tenderness. It’s a subtle fierceness, formed. One that glows like an ember. A scalding cinder. And it burns slow, too. You can’t help but translate the language of the clouds and fall in love with the color yellow. An everlasting love affair. Dusk, for the remainder of time.‬ The most honest, heartfelt words and honey dipped hearts become the flavor of the season and you hear songs more deeply. Feel it all, more deeply. I often wonder if I’ll tip toe off the surface of this Earth sometimes, drift right on into space’s spaciousness. To just catch a glimpse of this orchestration from afar — a bird’s eye view of these ravenous blues. The hues. It’s so true —

Nothing is a coincidence, I believe this now.

1:11 am, a musing.

The tricks that time and distance play on us have us forgetting the necessity of loving. and not just the physical kind but the sort that changes your life. I am married to the sun, I’ve declared it on every square inch of my skin and no matter how many times the heart bruises, it still calls onto you, love. Challenged daily and still, with the thickness of my blood I only gather where the loving flows. Coagulated in ease and laughter, and the pristine joy as the destination rather than the life raft we carry in hopes to reaching “pleasantville”. I don’t escape to you as much as I crash and smash right up under you. I will love even when the skies turn grey and the boys don’t want to play - I will still love. when the tough gets to going and finally packs all those bags since the fears have overstayed their welcome, anyway -  I choose to reside here, love.

the slither of my pen —

What you knew

Let me rewind on you

All that you forgot

Let me hold

And let us dance

On the leaves of a date tree

Upon the malachite core

Slipping and sliding

Sequences of infinity

Burning the inner infirmary —

The flame and the ice

The fire and the wind

The earth and water

Each tingle in my eye

Signifying your sighs

Traveling through my thighs

Journeying through the wilder

You might be all the wiser

Genius and lioness

Alchemist and Anubis

If fire we make

Is the fire we take

Did we really choose this?

openess as a luxury~

tumblr, you are my safe space. here is the text box where I can say what I want. I can speak my pain and needs and feelings that often times spill out of iMessage boxes and never can be compacted into 140 characters. no emojis. no skimping. all words and all feelings. mostly mulled about in midnight baths after some tree or an over thinking binge. and today is no different. I figured that whenever I spoke out into the universe and God and myself in the mirror *cue the meme of the guy aggressively pointing at his own reflection* that I wanted openness and rawness in the place of emptiness, I probably should have been more direct and pointed. I probably should’ve expressed that I not only wanted to be a safe space, but wanted one myself. often the narrative of a woman being there and being there and never being received is as old as time but I guess that’s my fault for praying that evolution would’ve phased coldness and a callousness out along with shit like tails and hunched backs. I thought you are what you want and maybe that’s it. maybe I am being met with a level of bitterness to hone in on my sweetness. I am not perfect, but I am loud and proud in my imperfection. sometimes I am all talk no action. sometimes I have destinations with no directions. too impulsive and too wordy. stubborn and absent minded (probably because of the weed). I pray but often am not patient enough for the answers, and that’s just about my character. but I never withhold these facts about myself, matter of fact I am in the business of laying those out on the table: face up, all trust. and yet the trope of hidden, shadowy figures wafting their way into my life still manages to be a thing. i simply don’t want to be in love with outlines of folks, I not only desire your insides but your imperfections too. the level of honesty has to be unadulterated, NSFW vibes in order for me to be safe. to feel safe. I am chock full of surprises and mysterious ways but for love? all of that seems to go out of the window. I am invested in the work it takes to be present and patient enough in something to see where it leads, all leaps and all faith… but only if I am being met with the same energy. only if I am treated more than a safety deposit you can check up on a few weeks or days at a time to make sure your secrets are still safe. I deserve more than that. so thanks tumblr for listening even when inboxes won’t.

xo.