The chalk-white cliffs stood stark before me as I began the trek in this new foreign land. Warmth of the sunshine hit my skin. It was like a long drink of cool water after many months of living through the Pacific Northwest winter rains. The busy chatter of families and visitors surround me, bringing me a sense of welcomed security.

Yet, I couldn’t ignore the feeling inside of me that craves the serenity of solitude. Then I saw them–the words pressed into a wooden sign–

ALCOVE HOUSE (this way) 

In that moment the wind blew past me a cool, crisp wisp of air. Enough to raise goosebumps across my skin. I paused, the low sound of a beating drum in the distance. And then…

“Go…”

Was that a voice? I looked in every direction, puzzled and slightly panicked. What was going on?

There before me, centered beneath the towering pines, stood an empty path, free from the noise of the park. My heartbeat aligning with the cadence of the distant drum. I walked forward. 

I hate you for the time that has passed.

I hate you every time I see the moon.

I hate you when it snows.

I hate you when I hear live music, did you ever make it to your second show?

I hate that the smallest amount of devotion you ever gave me left me feeling weightless.

I hate you because sunflowers are ruined for me, but I can’t refuse to take their picture.

I hate you because you’ve ruined my poetry.

I hate you because I had to give all of your pictures back.

I hate you because I’ll never know how not to love you.

I find myself driving around the curves of Ridgefield and wonder if you once knew these roads so well you got lost in thought and forgot you were even driving.

Are these treelines and old houses etched into your memory and if so, could I communicate through past trajectories to reach you now?

That’s unlikely.

I remember I looked at you with sunglasses covering my eyes. Our eyes are the windows to our souls. I was too scared to show you that.

If I had, you would have seen a fire that burned so hot, and so bright, and so long for you…

Lose everything.

There in that moment.

Extinguished by my tears.

As winter moves closer she brings darker nights.

A time to rest and feel restless comes together in a dance, but there’s no certainty of who takes the lead from one day to the next.

If you were born under the approaching stars of winter, perhaps you naturally move through the dance steps with your eyes closed. With ease and grace.

You came into the world at her darkest hour, after all.

Maybe for your mother, you became her eternal bright light. Twinkling like the Christmas lights she forever hangs to drive out the darkness.

December nights come early.

💜 to my first born daughter 💜

The haze from the smoke turns the sun into a bright pink ball as it sinks below the horizon.

Scorching hot, the flames that burn in my lungs as I try to walk.

My eyes ache with the sting, but I’m trying to acclimate to the apocalypse.

The one inside my heart.

Oh, did you think I was talking about fire season? No, just the everyday hell you left for me.

Who is really kept safe in a nature refuge? Wild animals or the humans that visit?

The animals don’t recognize the boundaries. Humans create them.

The animals benefit from the physical protections. But it seems they don’t look behind, or too far ahead wondering if they are promised tomorrow.

I think the humans need the refuge much more to remind us that-Lifelines run through trees, And birds fly with ease.

Sidewalk chalk, All that’s left, All that’s lost.

Hot balmy nights of summer, Flags flying, Even the breeze doesn’t offer relief.

Mass confusion, Leadership colluding, Pressing our backs against a wall we will tear down.

Born from Enlightenment, We are the Self-Governed.

But old man’s pride and a sly orange smile are stomping too close to my fangs.

Even the thought they might care–The occasional, “how are you?’ feels like the sweetest sun rays piercing through dissipating, thunder clouds.

Their shortest of words acting with the deepest sentiments of love, making it possible to talk to them out loud and inside your head when all the other moments feel too heavy.

But the second you hear the laughter in their voice change to a stranger’s tone, a new bolt of lightening strikes the water, splitting the ship in two, tossing you out to sea–

And there is no mercy when the fifty foot swells suck you down with relentless force into their deep, dark abyss of a lost planet.

That break in time,

That splitting of what feels like your soul, as the vision of light you remember in their eyes turns to rejection from within–biology revolts.

Your lungs fill with the dark, murky salt water.

Stinging.

Strangling.

Suffocating.

Alarms going off, loud, angry, red, flashing lights–fangs bared screaming EMERGENCY, EMERGENCY–you need to breath.

But FUCK! What direction do you swim to take what you need?

Panic setting in–throwing off all sense of space…

Will you make it through the storm this time?

I wrote you that first message.

I invited you to coffee, just coffee.

I showed up to get you when you got stuck in the mountains.

I brought you homemade muffins when I thought I got you sick.

I invited you to your “would be” second concert before you flew to Romania, but you didn’t show up.

I was there to talk to you everyday when you were in Romania, until one day you disappeared and didn’t talk to me for the next 6 months.

I sent you care packages on your birth day and Christmas two years in a row.

I ordered your photographs that hang on my walls because I believe in the artist that I see.

When I thought you may have cared, I flew to where you were for a whole week because you told me it would be okay to drive out and see the stars together.

But when you saw me, you shut the door in my face and you said,  “You can’t be here. You need to leave.”

How is cruelty so easy for you? And how could I have allowed it? 

And who is the monster that I see? It’s me. It was only ever me.