An Afternoon.

Feet pounding sidewalks.

jazz music

swaying the trees

bending the hearts of the gods

until their feet are light

and they smile.

Dark clouds wafting over head,

“Be prepared.”

Voices drifting through tents

and trees

and hearts.

Shoulder, knee, forehead

– Connected.

Drums beating,

the rich vibrations of the earth,

goddesses freewheeling across

the stones.

Laughter, tears,

side by side,

in merriment, self-knowledge.

Food lifted to lips,

accepted by the body,

the lives sacrificed

thanked.

Strawberry vines, eggplant,

berries, bread,

“You belong here”.

Humming,

gentle, sunlight,

humming.

A dark empress,

a king of the dead,

a hooded man,

a red-haired woman.

The offerings

of time,

and heart,

and love.

A being

no longer frail,

but running and leaping,

and dancing

through a rich garden.

A Slightly Mushy, Happy Post

This might be a really crappy post because I am trying to listen to my mother talking while also doing what I said I would do today. Which is… Write a happy post!

I was going through my posts and realized how freaking depressing they are. As a group. Some of them just are. They are neither sad nor happy nor anything else in particular. But then lump them all together and I am running around like a madwoman trying to figure out how to make myself a not so miserable person.

Until I realize that I’m not quite a miserable person. My life can be fairly miserable and I certainly have days where I want to curl up in a ball and stop existing, but there’s a lot of good in it. I have time to read books and to wander through woods and I have a roof over my head and a job and thus some form of income. I have clothes and paint and ways to play music.

And what most days is the most important thing, I have amazing friends. Sometimes I miss the heck out of my old group of friends and, gods, do I wish some of them were still in my life because there are moments that don’t feel entirely complete without them, but I adore the friends I have now. I love wandering in the woods with them. I love the honesty and truth in each of them and how open and real they are. I love cracking them open and having them crack me open in return. I love that I have found a group of people that I know I can trust with pieces of myself. I love knowing that I can call some of them up crying and it’s okay, they don’t care (Or, they do care, they care so much, but not in a negative way). Heck, they might even call me up first. And have, on multiple occasions. I love the nights that I can’t fall asleep because I spent time being alive with these wonderful people and the happiness I feel at being able to have them in my life is buzzing through me.

Recently, I have been so grateful for them. For every single one of them, from the friend (ish) person I have known since I was 12 to the friend (ish, in another way) person at work who I can sit and talk about guys with.

So that’s some happy. And I could go on, about friends and about other good things in my life, happy things, and I am sure I will at another point in time (actually, I know I will, mwahaha), but it is late and I have things to do in the morning and I really want to post this while it is still Monday somewhere (still living in New York is good for one thing, at least), even if it is a messy post and it isn’t even attempting to be written eloquently or to impress anyone. But, that’s what happy things are sometimes. They are blunt and a bit jagged, but in a good way. They don’t have everything smoothed down to perfection. They are moments of honesty rushing up and taking shape without being forced into a specific one.

And I am fortunate to have a lot of those moments, even if sometimes the other moments outnumber them by a ton. But the wonderful thing is that one of those moments, of happiness, outweighs a handful of the not so great moments.

I hope that, whoever you are reading this, you are surrounded by a group of people who care, who will prove all your doubts wrong, who will wander through woods, both real and metaphorical, and you will know the happiness that a good group of friends gives. And I hope you find happiness in the little things, that you brush your soul against the facts and find peace in the details.

~Kiartha Qwon’um

I Miss…

I miss the way your hand fit against mine

I miss the warm hood of your car against my back as we stared up at the stars

I miss the way it felt when you looked at me

like sunlight had pooled in my chest

and rivers were beginning to run from my heart to my toes

I miss the way you laughed when I danced like a crazy person

and the moments when you joined me

I miss you and I miss me

I miss us

Not the way we ended, but the way we began

with long nights laced with soft words and quiet laughter

because our not so crazy family members were asleep

when we were wide awake, our affection our caffeine.

I miss the way your voice sounded

ringing out across the cold-de-sac

or bouncing between trees as we explored God’s creation.

Sometimes I don’t miss us,

but the way things were.

I miss the laughter that lived in my skin

I miss the way I believed in magic

I miss the magic I found when I was with you

I miss hours spent writing letters and the excitement,

the hummingbird wings grazing my ribs,

when you greeted me with a warm embrace and folded up paper

riddled with the chaotic scrawl of a boy on fire

Because once a fire lived in your bones and it shone

so brightly that sometimes it was hard to look at you.

I miss the white fire that danced under my skin

that burned up my spine and around my heart

and when our fires met we were unstoppable.

I miss when I woke up with eyes begging to close

not because they were worn from tears

but because they had not rested more than an hour –

there was so much to see that I never wanted to close them.

I miss trusting

I miss having someone I could put my trust in

someone I believed in the way I had never believed in a someone before.

I miss knowing

Knowing that everything would be okay

That life has purpose, has a meaning

That hidden among all my dirt was a jewel

and that you saw it

I miss closing my eyes at night

with praise on my lips

instead of doubt.

I miss the way it felt to know that even when my house was crumbling

my home was not a building with four walls

My home was two arms that were always there

to take me in and keep me warm

when the cold was seeping in and I felt that it would break me.

I miss believing that all of these things

would be mine

– be ours –

once more

if only I prayed, if only I trusted if only I fought.

But the fight and the trust, sometimes even the prayer

are gone

and I am left with an unending list of what

I miss