The first poem I've written in years.
Trigger warning: some thoughts of death
Today is a good day to live
Today is a good day to breathe, to love, to remember.
To love + remember the fact that I’m still breathing.
With the pieces of my body
My history
Scattered around me
Like a baby surrounded by puzzle pieces
I don’t even know where to begin.
With my birth? My first word?
Or the hugs + kisses + books that got me here
And I’ll ride the wings
Of sparrows and bluejays to the dreams of my future
Our futures—grrl, the ones we’ve created and dreamed of in this nest
Are worlds where these pieces don’t fit
But neatly form something entirely our own, a home—
And I think it’s in that tree right there.
Or maybe I can throw all these pieces across these rooms
Dancing with joy for just a minute
Crying at this destruction
Knowing each piece of me is smothered in love and pain and heartbreak and hope
And I’m ready to move on; but find these pieces of my history on a rainy day
And they’ll each tell me their stories over and over again, these bits of evidence
Keep roping me in, and carry me to bed telling me
“I’ve been here before.”
whispering my struggle
to name
to honor
to embrace
to love
to let go and break the shame, like a lover telling me
“I love you when you’re hard-of-hearing and when you’re deaf.
when you’re here, all of you.”
And sometimes, just sometimes,
I want to disappear into the horizon
Into those gorgeous sunsets
At the coast
At the river
Smack dab in the middle of these cities because I don’t think I can make it this time.
Because I think I’m weak
Too imperfect that I’m not worth lovingly learning
The ropes of survival
Those times remind me; if today is a good day to live
Then today might be a good day to die
Because in those moments I don’t know which way is closer to home;
To these places that are still unknown and I’m so tired of feeling alone.
So here’s a kiss to survival,
To these bones
To the pieces of this puzzle where with which I’m still making a home for myself.
Here’s a kiss to ease the pain,
Here’s a kiss to my body;
These pieces I’m still figuring out,
These worlds I’m building,
The bruises from stranger’s words that feel like surgeon’s knives that have not yet come;
And while that’s not okay,
I’m learning that no place is completely safe.
I leave a kiss for when I wake in the morning,
As my body + history will never be completely stolen.
Maybe some bits are lost in unwritten diaries and
A photo book filled with pictures never taken
I’ll find them and put together
Piece by piece,
A home.
