interpreting the complexities of self

me age seventeen:

I don't even think god is real 

I want to smoke weed all of the time

me age twenty-two:

love is the closest to god I will ever be

weed makes me scared 

letter to myself #2

You are doing so many things right. I know you worry quite often about 'being good'. What does that mean to you? What does 'being good' look like? When are you bad? Could you ever be bad if you're human? If you're just an animal? You wonder if you're very much this or much too little of that. You want to be more of something while being less of that other thing. You're funny when you bargain with your brain like this. Have you considered the fact that you have evolved from monkeys lately? Think about it some and see if the standards you reason with continue holding up. Hope that helps. You handle change well. Whether you realize it or not. Your ability to hop from situation to location back to situation is honorable but you don't notice that. You're busy wondering you'll grow out your bangs. We always have a choice over what we lean into. You lean into questionable curiosities sometimes. It's because you're strange and brilliant. It's because you're something 'good'. Life is very very very messy; a very alive thing. You step on the scale. You wonder if you reach out enough to the people you love. You wonder when you'll clean up your Spanish speaking. You wonder if you'll live through a war. You wonder if he will love you for his entire life. You wonder what is it all for. If you knew why we were here, would it change anything?

Would you still pray? 

No salt

I desire not the destiny of Lot's wife 

My path will not lead me to an eternity of salt

for gazing at what is behind me

I always consider what my bare feet carry me away from

but I do not visit to pages turned 

My future is spilling over with water 

Freshwater

New life 

No salt 

No salt 

No salt 

Atargatis

 

 من فمك لباب السما ياختي

from your lips to God's ears

Lady Macbeth in Chains

A wise woman once said 

the hours between three am and five am 

are sacred, fluid

The veil between worlds grows thinner 

spirits dip in and out of realms 

You can hear inklings and etchings 

stories and dreamings

if you rise in time 

to catch the fraying threads therein 

Despite all the ready wisdom in the worlds-

I always sleep in

A Clock's Life

She's sitting on her bedroom floor, looking up at the pink clock on the wall and wondering if this is the last time she will ever have to see her father. The hands of the clock tick and she looks down at her own. "I am so young. I should not feel this sad. I am so small. I should not feel a weight this massive." She found what little air there was to breathe in that foggy bedroom and she choked it down- awkwardly, inexperienced. Eyes back to the clock. Back down to her pale, snow-bitten palms. Her crying halted when He walked back in. "You are breaking my heart." She didn't say anything. The clock carried on.

"How lucky you must be to be inanimate. To not feel the way I feel.", she thought. She wanted a clock's life. She desired an existence where nothing could hurt her in the way that bruised her each second. "I am so young." He left the room, slamming the door. She remembered the legal office lady's words: "You don't have to see your dad anymore if you don't want to. You just have to tell him." Like it would be so easy to tell him that. She would rather have covered herself in fish oil and swam through shark-infested waters than to look him in the eyes and speak her peace. There was no peace. Only a clock to envy.