Bad Company

am i sound in feeling mundane gatherings to be so mundane? do i think myself an upright prude in my notions about the crowd around me? everywhere i look, i see there is a lack of.. well i don't quite know. something that should exist in a room full of friends that is absent. in that room, i am a stranger. what's more, these people would say they are my friends. would they? i don't know that either. would i say these are my friends? i am a woman of many, many words. so many words that i mesh and swirl them together. a great deal of ideas, opinions, curiosities, i am full of things to share! in that room, i am void of any personality. i can't say where i go. i'm back in my room. in my head. i'm with people that make me feel that i can take up all of the space the room can provide me. god, i feel like an asshole. these people aren't cold to me, well, not all of them. there is this sense that they do not contain the best interest for me. in friendships, truly, and until the end of time, i seek that. i go wandering for that. i deserve that. a gaping hole just sits there in my torso. i'm good for a snide comment. i'm good when someone asks me a question. but where did my own statements go? i don't want to make suggestions. i want to sit in my car and listen to my nowhere near playlist. there goes kelti's silhouette again. then i tell myself, "you aren't a prude for wanting a different environment of people around you." yes, i am young in the world. i've only encountered a very small percentage of the people i will ever intersect paths with. one thing i have noticed, despite this. 'good' people make me feel one of two ways. embraced or tolerated. they make me feel noticed but not embraced or they make me feel how i felt being in esther's room, age sixteen. i existed. i existed for a cause. i was looked at. in that room, i'm just floating. keep telling myself, "you aren't an asshole! stop thinking you're an asshole!" being such a passive, swaying spirit, i've grown familiar with being okay with nearly anything. any person, any room. stepping into my womanhood kind of makes me feel like an asshole. now i care about who's company i'm in. rather, who is in my company. say i were someone else, i'd treasure me. i only say that because i treasure myself. i'm not an asshole, i just know what it feels like to have friends that see every speck of you and hold it like a safe-kept grain of rice in a wind storm. in their palms, cupped. warmed. i won't settle. tonight, i felt lonely. i miss my friend up north. my heart has a magnetic pull towards the north. makes sense that i am headed there. i am petrified but my blind faith in myself outshines any shred of fear making its way up my spine. goodness is in me and it surrounds my plans, my path. i believe with my eyes shut. my one prayer is that kind company finds me. encompasses me. swallows me. i am ready for more love than my heart could even dream of.

The Temple

in the temple yesterday i felt god 

i only feel god in between profoundness lately

god has been subtle and inconspicuous 

god is between the seasons 

god is in my mother's laugh

my mom seldom laughs with her entire stomach 

i look at my mom and i wonder how this is the same woman i knew at infancy 

this is the same person but am i that same person?

am i that innocent slab of newness? 

in the temple yesterday i felt god

my close friend, my sister on the earth, she cried 

she sobbed and looked at Buddha's face

i felt god and it wasn't the god they introduced me to 

praying and praying for things to fast forward 

i remember my childhood room

i had two of them

a room for each parent

neither of those spaces belonged to me

and when you are a child

it is important to feel that something belongs to you

anything 

in the temple yesterday i felt god

when i walked through the holy place

soaking in every alter 

i saw love

food left out because the gods get hungry, too

incense burning in hopes of requited wishes and dreams lift with the smoke

when i see the Buddha's face

i know every answer laying on my heart

all i need is to sit in a temple with someone who loves me

and sob for ourselves 

relinquish hurt and hold each other's suffering 

when we suffer together, we mend 

i want people to mend with

god, alone, it doesn't feel like enough

it isn't profound enough

i saw god in the temple yesterday

there was no mirror there but i know what i saw 

i saw god i saw god 

in the temple yesterday 

Dark Chocolate

my soulmate (because i believe in those) will hopefully make me feel the way i feel when i eat a piece of dark chocolate or maybe they will make me feel the way i do when i get to hold an elderly person's hand

or maybe they will recreate the feeling i get when i can sit on the shower floor after a gruesome shift, watching all of the espresso grinds swirl down the drain, eternal dripping of the showerhead, happy to know i can rest here

maybe they will remind me of how i felt in the forest up north, last spring 

with all the banana slugs and moss and all of the patches of sunshine that peaked through the towering trees

i think they might remember small details about me and they will know i don't have the patience for anything mediocre i want something to be horrible or absolutely on fire with goodness

there is a chance they might see me the way i have always wanted to be seen: for who i am

no one thus far has been able to achieve that, sometimes not even me

i think they would like to know my older brother. they might make conversation with him even when he is awkward because it is someone i grew up with and that counts for something

they'll remember stories i've shared with them and even when i begin to retell the same ones, they will let me say my story because i like to and it doesn't matter if they've heard it

i think i would like if they could love my inexpressible sentiment towards everything ever 

some of the people i have passed by so far have made me feel confusing to love i just don't think i loved them i loved them in the sense that they are human and i see them and i love humanity deeply and genuinely but being in LOVE in a state of love like that no that was not there even if i convinced myself it was

this post is making me feel naked 

List of things I love right now

-The song Christian Brothers by Heatmiser 

-Yellow Curry

-How the months April and May look when I write them

-Eating breakfast in absolute silence

-Belly dancing in my room

-Pj Harvey (forever and ever)

-Being so single it is not even funny

-Rewatching my favorite arcs of Bleach 

-Going on google just to stare at pictures of Dizzy from Guilty Gear

-Wearing a full hoop in my septum piercing 

-Sandwiches with tomato 

-Bok Choy in soup

-Organizing the medicine cabinet weekly

-Wearing my big blue sweater my best friend bought me for my twenty-first birthday 

-Calling my dad even when he doesn't call me

-Sitting on the shower floor, letting the hot water hit my toes

-My Irish clog ring that I only wear on my left middle finger

-Making a daily plan to go to bed early and staying up every night

-My friend Giuly's cooking 

-Hummus 

-Making stern people crack a smile

-Wearing pig tails

-Sleeping alone in my bed

-Anything knitted by hand