Barefoot amidst the movement of lapping, cold waves—a gentle soul walks onward into the ocean. Mangrove branches loop out from the water and marine alluvium soils. Tiny fish grow within the intertidal zone, protected by the plants and disrupted by her calm feet digging into the sand. Hair wild amidst the cool sun rays softly kissing each eye into a deeper caramel hue. The water against her strong ankles as low pools fill and recede into the Earth. Gusts pick up cooling a body flowing in tandem with the ocean waves as the heart connects to the soul of the ocean.
Women
Super Blood Wolf Moon
The fronds rustling in the chilled air and a wolf’s moon gently watches as I inhale and exhale smoke from within my soul and out towards the night sky. She looks down with her red face soon to be eclipsed and a secret nod occurs between us. She is a protector—moon goddess—and I am a loyal servant. In my sensuality I extol rituals in her name as invisible, glittering strings grow from within me and dissipate into energy like the smoke exiting my lungs. Each breath is an intention, each inhale is a collected pool of energy brought further in to my body. The moon wears a red veil and I am naked, barren without need for shrouds. No clouds exist between us now and soon we will become one.
All In Passing
He thins me, to which my response is a laugh. A woman, looks at me as she overhears and laughs to which I wonder if it is part mockery. No matter, for I still maintain civility. I am small, but as the man said, a thin that will not break. Perhaps I am almost rubber band-like—my body with its refusals to fray as I spread myself out larger than she thought ever possible.
Enduring
From where enters your strength, your will to live? It reminded of how battered and bruised I have been. A memory of black clouds coming down onto me haunts my head and I had hoped that I had healed that trauma, but they asked me: where does that strength come from? There were no good answers to that question. Perhaps it was this ancestral DNA or my mother’s mitochondrial DNA that let me live though the struggle. How ungrateful I must seem, to have that survivor’s will and to hate the act of having to survive. She must look at me with disdain or maybe with pity at knowing that her scars are inscribed into my genetic makeup too.
Why have you stayed? I am asked this question, not in so many words. Sadly, no responses escape because I hold the gates tightly shut for fear of being seen as the fool. Who could have thought that this would be the woman striving to bear the fruits of my labor—so hindered by a simple soul?
Medusa
Like me, never another one
I have learned this the hard way
They all seek me when I’m gone
But my mind they’ll never sway.
—
Like me, forever coming undone,
They ask me to always stay
But I’ll keep severing this bond
Come whatever may.
—
For me, they always turn to stone
As I go through my day to day
Because this goddess, they’ll never own
She will always keep these feelings at bay.
Persephone Let Her World Die
The glass has been consumed dry and the time ticks the seconds away into the nothingness of an empty memory. They process and release, process and release, and the cycle moves on through endlessly until finally it is time. All are anxious to leave and if disappearing in thin air were a possibility, you would never see anything from them again. There is an overwhelming feeling of lethargy picking at these bones and making the skin parched for rest. Persist, the cycle has not been completed. Respire the stagnant air, for freshness is not possible in this atmosphere and you must take what you can get. Provide your minutes as payment so that you may consume before you are consumed completely. Run down to the basement and greet Hades in his humble abode and perhaps you’ll convince Persephone to return to the world of the living, but even the sweetest flowers are poisoned by the most devilish of men.
Dark Beauty
She was an inspiration to me.
Her easygoing nature
The darkness within her
Still, she lived unforgivingly.
Norms did not impede her like they did me.
Her dress was dark and long
The photographs with him
Still for Love, she lived willingly.
I wanted her courage.
Her ability to simply be
The human she wanted
Still, there I sat longingly.