Welcome to the panels of my collection.

Where dust cannot gather on the pages, but the pages turn all the same with your memories and those of others left behind.

You’ve made the cut from me with the full reckoning force of your inherent ferocity.

I often wonder of your bellicose nature. Did it come to you by way of your ancient nordic bloodlines? Did the captors of your youth—those who ridiculed or tried to reshape the lens through which you see the world—awaken the coding of your genes?

Remember the day you took me to your childhood home? I looked out and saw a peaceful, green field, with a creek running alongside her. Did those thieves and their cruelty condemn the way you drew on the security of all that you ever knew? Did the disruption of her serenity lead you to seek out battlefields in which you learned to fight?

As a man, did the sorrows you faced as a rejected husband, lover, and protector bring you to a girl with a shadowed heart? Were you intoxicated by the way she moved—like a silk ribbon gracefully floating in air—defying gravity? Yet when you tried to hold it you found it wasn’t intended for grounding.

I pictured the boy you once described on the day you took me to your field. In that place, I felt the safety of the land and the water you once knew.

And it was there that I saw a wounded buck with blood-stained, rust-colored fur. His broken antlers forming points of sharp weapons.

His restless pace was unsure and he contemplated whether leading me down to the banks of the stream was worth leaving the solace and healing of his field.

Reaching out my hand to him, I made too quick of a movement. And with the stealth of his inner fighter, he turned away leaving me on the other side of what feels like an ocean.

And as my heart breaks, I drop down to my knees, tears falling into the creek that guards his heart. Forever unknowing if they can be welcomed as an offering of my love.

The hares of the early morning jump off the main path to hide in cover.

Above me the hunter’s belt visible in the night sky of the city. A reminder to my huntress spirit.

The long days and warmth of summer are near their end and the days of gathering lay before me.

Seek out the fruit that restores.

Harvest the bounty that sustains.

Mother—may we sense your presence and accept the blessings.

-njc

On meeting grief, I lost some of my True North. In desperate attempts to replace love lost I have sacrificed pieces of my soul. Oh, when you think you are strong in stability you think that could never happen to you. But, it’s the thing that turns your stomach inside out when it does. So if you are reading this and can relate, don’t beat yourself up.

If you aren’t done with the shadows allow them to dance themselves out. Try and keep as safe as possible because there will be moments you don’t recognize the face in the mirror or the hardness of your heart. Just keep breathing. The person you are, the love you have to give is the iron element that has always been your foundation.

If you don’t want to hold on for dear life, let go. Let blood fill your clenched, white knuckles. Or hold them tight a little longer. Listen to where you need to be and if you get there and it breaks your heart, let it break until you push back up to the surface for air. No one can pull you back in and swim to shore for you.

But those who never stopped loving you will be sitting on the sand with a sun-kissed, warm towel. And the seagulls flying high out over the ocean will squawk their familiar song. The sand dunes will rise at your back and the tall beach grasses will sway to the currents of wind blowing through your hair.

Settle in the place of refuge. Sit and gather the salt-stained tatters of your heart. Allow the tears to fall from your eyes and wash away the sandy grit that has kept them barely open. Look across the horizon where the vast ocean of darkness transforms and creates new life.

There are no expectations or rules or emergencies for you to know why you are here or when you will be ready to move. Embrace the warmth of the sunlight and feel its arms wrap your soul in its power.

It was always you and you are all it will ever be.

Digging
Shoveling
Here comes the snow

The metal scrapes along the concrete—

Unseen blood coursing through veins matching the rhythm of visible breath.

Listen to the lingering state of the last time you threw weight.

Digging
Shoveling
Here comes the snow

Somewhere in Texas a little boy playing falls asleep for the last time. His energy exchanged for all the energy that has been taken.

Heartbreaking
Collapsing
Coming down around

How do we get ourselves out?

The how must be now.

Listen to the lingering state of the first formation. Awareness towards the collective Self-Realization.

Notice those that notice the birds singing the original lullaby from the holly bush.

Give more than take

Learn more than remain ignorant

Cry a little, sometimes a lot, but then work with hope until Mother takes you back.

Her labor gave you life, your life must be for her labor.

(And smile as a blue-eyed poet writes of our souls, our Mother, and our transformation.)

You know what I’ll never forget?

The Publix aisle, where we met eyes, shook heads, and agreed on the dark toasted pretzels—

The sweet sincerity in your voice at 4:30am in the morning when you tell me how beautiful my curls hanging down the back of my neck—

The graveyard that forgot us, or did it ever exist?—

The authentic, yet well-thought about version of yourself after 20 years, walking me through the park, reaching for my hand—

The subsiding weeks, where you lie beside me and I still listen for and celebrate the rise and fell of your breath—

And drink in the softness of your skin as you fall in and out of sleep from the disruption of your natural rhythm.

In our new discovery of Self, let us find the flow of consciousness that welcomes our journey through metaphysical connectivity—

No longer let us leave room for things that pull us away from the Divine Current. Only then shall we experience man-made suffering. Come closer to God, be God.

August 6, 2020

The morning rain brings her offering. Quenching endless days of the sun’s splendor. Hear the plants humming their songs of gratitude.

In the quiet space I open my hands and receive the blessings of refreshment. Cleanse me from calamity, wash away the unsettling of my heart.

Seated with my breath, the Lynx cat goddess comes and lies at my feet. She only partakes in her morning bath ritual when I give rise to movement and show her reverence.

Then slowly, she settles back in her posture. Her natural ability to rest received to me as a gift.

August 3, 2020

It really is quite simple…

Simple—as in if the feeling is absent then there is nothing left to pursue anymore other than a simple politeness, even a complete silence. Was your feeling for me absent, then?

So what is it that you craved from me? Messiness?

Very well then—Imagine a heart surgery where the chest has been cut open and pulled apart, exposing a now empty cavity. The heart thrown to the floor in a pool of blood because your hands weren’t steady. Followed by your words—I wasn’t ready, I need some restructuring.

Yes, I hear you. I understand.

Maybe in time the muscle will grow the strength to crawl back into my body. But for now it is immobilized on that cold slab of the operating table, the lights turned off and the walls crumbling in all around me as I fight to push oxygen back through my veins.

Just breath

Just meditate

Just find a way

Every two-thousand-eight-hundred and seven miles between us feels like two million eight thousand and seven hundred pounds of crushing weight driving me to the bottom of the deepest ocean.

2,807 tears that will now have to fall.

2,807 dreams I won’t be able to control.

2,807 lies I will say to to the world that I’m okay.

July 27, 2020

You wait so long to finally channel a direction for your life.

Decisions aren’t easy for you, but the moment you make them, hold on.

Yet suddenly the road is no longer paved with asphalt, and the road signs are nonexistent.

For a moment you take your hands off the wheel only to realize the car is gone and the only ground is your own two feet.

Blades of long grass and weeds with small flowers dance across any signs of the path. All you can do is recognize a freedom in their movements.

Maybe who you were born prepared you for this. So don’t hold your breath and let the things your mind cannot see break your heart.

Your heart has never left you.

July 26, 2020

Here it is. The writer you were asking for.

But that’s the thing, when I open the notes on my IPhone and ignore the world around me to get every syllable on paper, the sounds are like knives cutting into my heart and my soul and all I can do is bleed on this goddamn paper.

And when you ask me to go there you’re asking me to go to a dark cave where I never know if I’ll find my way out.

It means something has ripped my heart to shreds. Again.

This is vulnerable land, or maybe the land of the brave, where we aren’t afraid to wear our emotions on a page.

Slap me down, throw me away, make me go away. Get lost in the thought. Get carried away.

Steve, I wish I had had this for your class.

July 25,2020

You know what they say about patience

….

No, tell me Expert On All The Human Species because somewhere along the way it was only you who experienced happiness and pain, and have come to know all the answers.

Or maybe I’m just a female who has been existing in a lifeless bubble and yeah, if you had married someone too—you’d want her to stay home and raise the kids while you worked and progressed your career.

It’s so lovely that she can look in the mirror and continually see the tear-streaked painted cheeks of a clown.

Mental mother-fucking breakdown.

Mental break, breaking, broken cardiovascular system—and it feels like I’m not vasculing that much longer. You sucked out all that air.

Here’s my chorus for those who I’ve claimed to love:

Oh, please tell me again how wrong I am.

Or that I am over-the-top,

Or—all you have to do is just clock in.

Dear wonderful men with your beautiful, mandating, overrated cocks:

HEAR this for once—

Go fuck yourselves.