Relativity

 All time seems to stop

When we reach for each other 

A life in one breath

Grandmother holds me

Grandmother holds me
her bosom boulders
her chin hairs
mighty pines

even covered in snow
she blankets me with warmth
strokes my forehead
with soft wind

lets my tears fall
Into her meadowed lap
sometimes soft
sometimes sobs

watering the great
alpine garden
of this sacred land
where wisdom keepers

have made their medicine
for millennia
sitting in their grandmother’s
lap and magic

sol mates

The sun kissed you
before I could
stole your lips
from the trails they

were meant to blaze
on my skin
to follow the
freckled pathways only you

know how to navigate
constellations on collarbones
ready for a
pair of explorers to

pave a new pathway
of bliss, setting
off explosions with
every torrid touch across
my sun-kissed skin

return

 when my heart

feels too big to hold

i return to the land

let my tears

water the ground

wind stroking my hair

in Mama's lap

birds calling me to

be still

be here

Gaia holds my 

anger and grief

she feels it too

all mothers do

Electric company

 When the power goes off 

in the mountains

we snuggled close, letting the

electricity of bodies light up 

the room brighter 

than any fire ever could 

—

April PAD day 11 - powered 

tickled

 There are not 

enough fingers or toes to 

count how much 

you tickle me

—

April PAD day 12 - counting poem 

Heart of glass

 When they tell you 

to make art of your pain

they don’t tell you

that you’re going to feel it

so deeply that it

rewrites your insides 

like doodles

on scraps of paper

that harden into glass and scrape

your insides raw red

that each of those glass shards 

are pieces of a 

shattered heart 

that you can’t quite

remember the shape of

that your fingers will bleed on 

each hard edge wiggled 

into place 

in this miserable mosaic 

that breathes with the artist’s breath 

just barely 

— 

April PAD day 8 - “they never tell you” poem

Blank slate

I took your words as 

promises, as plans, 

but they were just possibilities 

—

April PAD Day 6 - a blank poem 

Captivated

Catching up with you is 

like catching butterflies

elusive and brief but beautiful 

__

April PAD day 4 - “catch up” poem 

If my life is like a tree

have I let myself 

be rooted in the 

shade of others? 

Have I turned my leaves 

toward any shiny object 

mistaking it for sun? 

Do the twists and turns 

of my journey 

gnarl like an oak 

or splay to the sides 

like a cedar 

solid trunk and 

feathery fronds

facing the sky

entrancing strangers 

with the fragrant tales 

of a life that has

weathered sun 

and storms 

bark rough 

patterned like henna 

with a story all 

it’s own

—

April PAD day 3 - a smell poem 

Rooted

when autumn arrives

and leaves begin 

to fall i 

remember that i 

am the tree

not the golden 

leaf spinning gloriously 

to the ground

The dance

There is no hard line 

between sunset and night, 

the oranges and pinks 

give way to the inky 

blues and purples 

in a dance, a caress,

they embrace each other always

but we cannot 

see it from where we’re standing 

cannot see that 

we’re the ones spinning ever 

away and toward 

the light, that we are 

the dancer

dizzy with power and regret 

—

Poetry prompt: Transitions 

Exalted

You worship me as
your goddess
pray that I’ll save you 

kneel at my altar
until I 

fall from grace when your

prayers are not answered

my whole heart can't mend 

your broken one

cannot love away 

your loneliness 

only gaze

at your loveliness

as you used to see mine

What’s the matter?

We believe we are separate

from the Earth 

from each other

can’t see all the emptiness 

that connects us 

—

April PAD day 27: believe or don’t believe 

Questions

I have so many questions 

so much hurt to understand

but the only one that matters

is how do you open your heart?

— 

April PAD day 24: question

Assent

How lucky am I 

to be born 

with such beauty 

that you cannot 

look away

keep your hands off

keep your cat calls

in your mouth

must thrust your desire 

into the world

into me 

to hold for you

without my consent 

—

April PAD day 13 prompt: lucky or unlucky

Thoughtless

There is no thinking with

your heart, it 

only knows how to feel 

to beat, to 

keep driving love/life forward 

—

April PAD day 25: thought 

Love your neighbor

Love your neighbor

your good book says, but 

you believe your 

Middle Eastern messiah 

was miraculously white, feel affinity 

only toward those 

who look like 

you, not the ones he 

would have loved 

You pick and 

choose which teachings are relevant 

and none have 

anything to do with love 

—

April PAD day 20: love or anti-love 

Counting sheep

They corral us together

feed us the same

straw theories

knowing there’s 

no substance 

nothing to stomach

but plenty to chew on

as they try 

to convince us

that the wolves

are our caretakers

they think we’re asleep

and because they can’t 

tell us apart 

think we don’t see 

when one of us is slaughtered

Waiting to breathe

She doesn’t pass 

wouldn’t want to

always seems to be 

holding her breath 

dark skin a beacon 

beaming Blackness without apology 

a light to 

her sisters and 

lure to lynch mobs

that could be 

around any corner 

constantly calculating the risks 

of her brilliance

in this world

and who it might attract 

—

April PAD Day 17 prompt: waiting