How much of this truth can I bear to see and still live unblinded? Audre Lorde this is the story of a girl untold this is the story of a girl smashed into innumerable shards, this is the story of a girl who learns to blind her sight this is the story of a girl that starts when she is fifty-six, just your average joe, but she is no average joe, she is a jack of all trades, wearer of masks a superhero whose superpower is to unsee the evil he did and the evil he said a

precious We all walk in shoes that are too small for us. Carl Jung it's the nails that first catch my eye, royal blue, primary blue he is showing me the vintage lip gloss is the red - red? i ask and he says something about red-dye number something and i laugh no not the dye, at my age i don't think about chemicals, i just want to know if my lips will pop! oh girl yes, he says but you're already gorgeous and i tell him he's gorgeous! then wander around the vintag

What color the underside of skin? Mark Doty asks mr doty in his lines about a crab but really i think it's about what we hide the wobbly skin that sags with age, the wrinkles we cover with chemically created concoctions none of it works, says a gorgeous grandmother pushing her grandbaby down the pharmacy aisle today but really i mr doty is talking about soul scars, the ones we cover up with pithy sayings about resilience and the gold medal for

I am listening to Kendrick Lamar. Tiny nearly broken air pods in my ears. Why God, why do I gotta suffer? The music is as loud as I can make it. To drown out fumes. Bus 68 to Mount Scopus. The University, two worlds pass one another Through a window. Why God, why do I gotta suffer? White Jerusalem stone apartment blocks. Lines of laundry. Fifty feet high. Black. Skirts and trousers. Baby clothes. An old women carrying three plastic bags sits. Next to me, her bags spill over.

this morning strolling through balboa park, past the fountain where my children splashed in summer heat in summer visits to baba down the road from the ficus i'd climb with kim and jimmy, the ficus that offered shade and stumps to sit where i hid with pen and paper and my first attempts at verse across from the theatre where I first stood on stage all makeuped under blinding lights breaking legs and swimming with butterflies this morning strolling i see a sign that read

i say. step back world. can't let it go unsaid. Sonia Sanchez as per usual since i've been here, in this holding space in my childhood home, mom and i start the day with a check-in of sorts, strong coffee for me and water and vitamins for her how are you? i ask and she smiles, says the sciatica let her sleep, and you? and i want to say something similar, minus sciatica, i want to say all the yoga is working and the daily breathwork and meditation, that the long walks on

i walk around the corner to buy a coffee, our last few minutes before driving up north, she is sad to say goodbye, though she knows goodbye, how many schools before the age of 5? and languages learned every home has stories, some we are happy to erase, some we bury away, carry that note written, a mommy i love you, in your wallet, still the curtainless windows of her top-floor flat look out to the empire state, she tells me of pride marching by and the days she was snowed

be careful there is a dog underneath, she warns as i slide in, the long table at the cafe that has become my new poetry home and just as i'm about to say i love dogs, i see a frenetic deep pumpkin red tail that could only belong to a golden his name is joey, she says and instantly i'm scratching his belly and behind his ears and start to feel a bit weepy and tell her about our riley who loved the world and believed the world loved him when did he pass?she asks, and i te

i learned to whisper and roar. Lucille Clifton like lucille, i learned to whisper and roar imagine a raw untouched piece of marble, think carrerra, think gooey soft yellowy perfection handed to a man with a wooden plaque on a wall engraved, kanji letters saying discipline a wooden plaque the size of my seven year old legs, a memento from his time in tokyo, a wooden plaque he used to engrave discipline into the gooey perfection of my baby flesh, each blow, a le

Listen to the secret sound, the real sound, which is inside you. Kabir Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me Audre Lorde say thank you to yourself, says the teacher, for showing up we close our eyes, but i can't find thank you instead i say sorry to myself, which feels like some distant foreign language buzzing in my ears, but then it brings tears and i can't stop saying sorry for all the ways i did not say thank you

Your silence will not protect you. Audre Lorde One day I will tell you what I've been. It will scare you. Yrsa Daley-Ward i thought a good life would be enough to erase re create re do or maybe undo what was done to me i refused to wear the cloak of that sins of the fathers biblical curse, so i fled the family city religion even my name i changed yesterday my mom asks me if I know why we pray

She says her name is Gallila, the woman fully dressed in the sauna, sitting on the top row, singing along with her headphones. As if unaffected, I lie on the on the lowest, a wet rag on my head. My mom sits near, we are barely breathing. I want to leave, I want to feel a cool breeze, but I make myself stay. I tell myself it's like a sweat lodge. I tell myself I need release. She sees my mom massaging her knee, are you ok? They talk about knee replacements and hyaluronic

it starts on the stoop, look for the lock box with a heart, says my daughter on the phone from work, only there is no heart, but there are five people sitting on the stoop, chill, on this steamy summer late afternoon, they are laughing about something and in the middle of a story when the man in a dark blue track suit asks, what are you looking for? I tell them a lock box with a heart and the lady with long pink nails says maybe the heart washed away in the rain, it r

I am certain I see him though the sun blinds my eyes, this almost afternoon amongst roses I am certain of that nose, sharp prickly, eyes I could see even in the dark, the mouth that at best grimaced and feet that shuffled down creaky wooden corridors I am certain though he is smaller, the monster I called father who was not my father, hunched over, wearing that same white bucket hat and same dark blue track suit I am certain of the racing heart and frozen blood the floo

we gather to heal, we gather to hear sounds, feel waves, reconnect, start anew on this longest day I say I have no expectations I lie we lie on mats covered with fleece blankets and warm socks, we spray rose water and burn palo santo, the scene is set we are ready a ripple of sound, chimes tiptoe in, like stardust sprinkling, I can feel the peace like a weighted blanket like clean mountaintop mist until a helicopter rumbles overhead, it circles round and round, I

I hit the seaside early, June gloom they call it but I don’t find gloom in the wind in my hair and clouds baby-grey close in embrace, they kiss my cheeks with salty mist I am held I walk alone, not even eight and this beach community has long been awake families making sand castles, riding waves, bikini wearers braving 63 degrees, catching rays on gravel turned sand by rough surf blinding in its infinite cleanness, cool packed sand, soft beneath my feet I am held

Life is so neverendingly cyclical; the end can’t be the answer. Yrsa Daley-Ward Suppose you say no. To the voice that returns at the most inconvenient times. That knows, just like that lover, how to pierce. Suppose you say no to the proclamations that you are hysterical, sensitive, over- emotional. Where is that sliding scale of normal? And why do they get to make it? Suppose you say no to the little one, the sweet innocent one whispering in your ear to be nice, the o

We start out early, already at 6:18 we strip off sweatshirts, my eyeglasses slip off my sweaty nose and find ourselves in a slow saunter on the sweet trail from the Visitor’s Center, under shade, past a creek and trees old and fragile with too many young couples’ initials carved into them Memories engraved. Mine less visible, equally invasive We trod on. And agree on two hours, I don’t tell her I am thinking less, much less, I am fragile today, waking with a shaking

Latin for, it is solved by walking There’s a labyrinth near Balboa Park, my mom says. Amother memory, familiar space—the places I spent time as a child. Another landing strip, I need feel the earth beneath my feet. Before I fly home. When are you going home? I avoid the question, instead say, I went to a labyrinth once in France. I think it was Chartres. Built into the nave. She asks what a nave is and I say, it’s the largest part of the church, comes from the Latin word fo

It’s just after 6am when we arrive, my mother points north that way to fortuna it’s a tough one, she warns but I’m tired of flat terrain staying safe, I’m weary of carrying the fear of hills and slippery rocks, I can no longer bear the weight of my secret so old I don’t know when it began its descent deep. maybe when I was four where do you feel it? my friend asked the other day everywhere it’s sneaky that way, it knows it must stay silent or else it all unrav