We try so hard to individuate, differentiate, emancipate. “Please don’t let me become like you,” we say. And she cuts her hair, like I did at twelve and sixteen, and so many more times to keep myself alone in my tower, and to scare away all the princes. Sometimes one is simply more comfortable with … Continue reading The Night Queen in Daylight
In a pastel early morning sky today the moon was still silver and lingering. She was just letting us know she was not quite finished calling up the waters in our blood and tissues, begging the moisture in our skin to percolate and dance on our surfaces with the luminous air infused by her pregnancy- … Continue reading Blooming Moon
I. My body is a microcosm of the earth, raging against invasion, depletion, destruction. Scars are blocking my guts, like damming up the Amazon River when 70% of our medicines come from the jungle it feeds. Some things just need to flow or the world suffers. Tribes have survived deep inside the forest, keeping the … Continue reading Life Giver (Pacha Mamma Gives Birth)
Vultures pick the wounds clean. Clarity comes through whispering trees. I am still, and listening. Copyright © 2018, Sheyorah Aossi Art: Stillness by Joyce Huntington.
There is a hum of electricity whenever we are close. It is warm, and familiar and makes such a pretty sound. No matter how either one of us is feeling, the voltage sings softly to our atoms and to our spirits when we touch, reminding us of home. Your stress has its own current. My … Continue reading Starseed Love Story
I. Being shocked to the core of me, my veins feel hollow - space conducting electricty, fleshless, ungrounded. The sounds whirl and collapse in my head, like a circle of dominos folding under water. My hands suffer, unstable. Words fail, distant. I am taken away from myself, whittled down by ruthless invadors. They won’t stop … Continue reading Alien
It puts you out of touch with everything. And it's not as if you don't comprehend what is happening, either. That would be a blessing. But no, it's more as if there is no buffer to soften in-coming shattered glass and shrapnel, all forming a pile front-and-center in your head. You see it. It's too … Continue reading Shapeshifter (A Confessional)
I am wearing your clothes today, Mother, my heart. Your earthy-tones with purple hues surround me. Your textiles embrace me with their softness as if they are striving to be your arms. I have given many of your clothes away to the worthy: to the ones who saw you for what you really were – … Continue reading Dusk with Stars and Missing the Sun
This image is a still from Becoming Who I Was, the film this poem is based on. It is a documentary about a child who was a Rinpoche in his previous lifetime, and is displaced from his home in Tibet due to reincarnating in a rural region of China. He must travel, with the help of his elderly guardian, from a village in wintering China, through India, to Tibet, in the hopes of being reunited with his disciples who must claim him in order for him to fulfill his purpose for reincarnating. But Tibetan borders, as we know, are blocked and heavily guarded. I highly recommend the film, for the moving story, and for the stunning photography. And now the poem.
Poet's Notes: This was written in response to a journal prompt by Pixie Lighthorse from her book, "Prayers of Honoring Grief." The question was: How can I honor what I've been through?
