I stand within these well acquainted walls,
walls that confined my torture,
that defined hardships in pillows barely able to quiet screams, damp with tears,
closets and drawers kept parts of me well tucked away,
clothes that concealed a body full of hate,
clothes now in piles,
heaps on the floor, too many to count, outnumbered and out-of-date,
such false protection never protected in the first place.
I have decided to leave it, let go, now I know I need no more.
In that room there are stories, sentences and sentiments written in permanent ink,
they haven’t disappeared, behind the strides of rolled on purple paint.
It isn’t so easy to cover up what is left undone, it must be brought to the front and faced,
reconciliation leads to resolution, the stories must be changed.
Where I slept under glow in the dark stars, under saturns luminous ring, under jupiter,
galaxies of my imagination took me off to distant skies unmapped in my mind,
where electric staircases were made of elastic and lions lye on flat land,
grandfathers sleep, beds drop too low in the middle,
too soft for comfort, not enough form,
a black hole to get lost in where I left myself outcaste, nearly dead.
When I try to recall, I can’t remember what was written on those walls glimpses come and go with little substance, fleeting images in my mind.
Sometimes,
it is good to forget.
Sometimes, that is exactly what helps me remember.
To pull apart where this identity came from, what year, what time, what place, reviewing and recalling records, not everything needs to be known , says grace somethings ask of my patience to be strong enough to hold tension and wait.
I do.
I sort through what has developed from such decorations:
statues of unconscious courage,
dispensers of false sweetness,
quotes tattooed on two feet,
skeletons dancing on tapestries,
I have enough to go by and the rest I can release,
that is part of what begins to set me free.
I never wanted to be a hoarder of things without purpose that have no use,
what’s the point of filling spaces when instead I could have space?
This old tshirt, these stripes and jeans and dresses,
that which I was, a representation of me,
clothes displaying a false prophecy,
clothes stolen and binding me into something I never was,
something I put on to fit in, because,
to not was not an option,
to be left out was worse then falling,
and my knees already carried too many scrapes.
I choose my outfit to graduate, after having done this work, it is the only one I take,
a black dress
transparent
can see right through my chest
into heart
no longer covered by steal and ice,
metal has tampered its grief,
water will nourish this emergent seed.
Seed,
Four letters,
One, two, three, four
A new word,
A new world,
The birth of something yet to become,
but bound to be.
These seeds are coloured velvet red and black,
they are seeds that grow universes,
surfacing impeccable with time,
from a depth of darkness hidden,
invisible to the eye,
out of sight to everyone else,
but that seed knows itself.
It starts:
pushing through the hardened crust of earth,
having been uncertain for many months,
frozen for years on end,
underground for days that turn to decades too quickly,
scarified by seasons having come and went.
Ripening,
they are ripening,
in preparation for whats to be,
a sprout and two cotyledons leaves,
receiving light,
lifted towards the sun,
all that they were,
is in what they become.
Its a metamorphosis of commitment,
the willingness to change,
to shed, to drop, to gather,
to organize and rearrange,
to open, to bloom, to weave,
to loosen tangles of thought,
to have action match speech and let the heart lead,
because, why be caught?