Tag: pain

Lashanda1 Comment

What are you most proud of?

That I don’t see life as a miserable, gruelling concept. 
That I don’t see life as something forced onto me. 
That I still manage to find the light, the crack in the sidewalk to sprout from. 

How, even through convoluted grief and anger at years lost to trauma and heartbreaks of every genre but romantic, I still want to be alive. 
How, even through the identity changes, early maturation and dissociation, I crave a fresh morning to begin again. 
How, even through adversity, I still desire this life; my life. 

How, even?

Because I want to feel the sun on my scars.
Because joy is more potent when sorrow is steeped in with it. 
Because I want to love, to mourn, to laugh, to sob, to emote,

And I will pursue this at any cost. 

Do You So Dare

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do you so dare
to suck on contempt like a sour cherry,
the tannins taut on your teeth,
saliva building in your gums, 
pulling out every last ounce of bitterness?

do you so dare 
to strangle grief with your bare hands,
to wring dry your nerves, 
to feel flesh bulge between your digits, 
releasing the life from it? 

do you so dare 
to watch joy spark and crackle in front of your eyes, 
to let it ignite your irises,
to let the purest form of energy bounce off your sockets like mirrors, 
to let it penetrate the windows to your soul? 

do you so dare 
to let emotions travel through your bones,
to ooze through your skin,
to feel fully? 

Cry for You.

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I could cry days for you,
weeks,
years.
I could cry you a new calendar,
a new generation,
a new slice of time in the sky,
salty enough,
to compensate your sweetness,
a place where’d you’d be the revered sovereignty,
and would ban my tears for eternity,
because you never cease to exist for me,
as long as I can cry for you. 

Don’t Tell Me You Always Knew.

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The idea
of men,
of manhood,
the way it tasted in my mouth,
gagging
on my pitiful fortuned future,
one where a man
with a hairy chest and no room in it for me,
was what to desire,
so I learned to choke back my own,
believing a life without love,
a throat full of thirst,
was my white flag. 

So don’t tell me you always knew,
because for a long time I didn’t. 
I held in my mouth the dripping inkling
that i was meant for a woman all along. 
But the delectable nectar,
the joyous certainty, 
was far too sweet to spit out. 

the tradeoff for maturity.

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I gave up all my childhood relics too early. 
I refused my dolls, my stuffed animals, my notebooks full of novel ideas, 
to swallow maturity instead. 

I was sooner than ready ushered into adulthood, 
to wear the mark of maturity ripe on my flat chest. 
Every “you’re so mature” proclaimed from an adult singed it deeper into my flesh. 
The scar soothed my loss. 

Yet, I was not welcome in adult spaces. 
I was hushed and spoken over, my emotions belittled, 
contrived in the twilight zone of being a child in years, but not in feeling. 

Now, I am an adult in years only. 
In feeling, perhaps a quiet, old matriarch whose hands are calloused with past lives. 

But I have danced for many years in the arms of apparent maturity, 
surely I should be a natural? 

I am anything but. 
The dance is awkward and clumsy, and my teacher is absent. 
I traded the precious performance of childhood for adult approval. 

And now? I don’t know how to dance. 

The Summers of Adulthood

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I’m a child of the hot July sun.

I couldn’t wait to peel a wet bathing suit off my taut skin after a swim. I wanted that first feeling of realizing the sun was still out at 9pm, knowing the season had just begun and anything was possible. I wanted blackened feet from being barefoot all day and bike chain grease on my calves. I wanted sticky popsicle hands that I would only rinse quickly under a hose. I wanted to collapse in bed after a full day outside and finally realize how exhausted I was. I wanted to put potato chips in my sandwiches. I wanted to sit by a crackling bonfire and feel the intensity of the heat. I always felt like I could sit right in the center of the fire and not be burned but feel alleviated.

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The Taste of Rock Bottom

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Reaching the lowest lows gives you a different appreciation for the highs. When you’ve truly looked rock bottom in the eyes, nothing or nobody can take that away from you, no matter what heights and accolades you reach. It’s a deeply personal place for everyone, wall to wall full of your mistakes, your shadows and the parts of yourself that were never nurtured. Once you’ve genuinely had a long stay in this place, cleaned up the cobwebs and dusted a little, is when you can leave triumphed and forever changed.

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