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start to curate a library of your own

use the cover and words to decorate your home

buy a banned book

better yet, buy two

to get one and to give one

no one seems to make a difference alone

tiny libraries spread across a nation

hard to find

harder to bury

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the taste of tears on my tongue

to stop only when begged

no longer able to inhibit this honesty, some things will be said

calling after my sisters

they have yet to answer

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What are you asking me to see?

Asking me to be?

Asking me to receive?

Ah, to receive, it feels so unsafe to me

To be soft and vulnerable

I have made it such a task, the ultimate ask

To lean into grace, impossible at this pace

What will living ask of me?

A collection of undocumented emotions

To expose and express the depth of my internal ocean

Mine and theirs

It may take my life

Yet, writing has been said to be a negotiation with the dead

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Slow and steady with my health, creativity, and work. Each day a little, but try not to push.

Time, the complexity of life and the greatest gift. Slow down sweet girl.

We control none of it.

Each day it seems, I try to erase the happiness.

A developed survival. Irrational? Or some kind of inheritance.

Memories take hold, this body remembers the rigidity.

Young and innocent. Fear and control my learned companions.

Stay safe, stay safe, a constant whisper. Never heard, only felt.

Practice tragedy, beat life to the punch.

For the body holds wisdom. Symptoms that seem to predate my time. Sensations stored for generations.

The days are changing.

On the way to year 38 and trying to do, to be, something different.

One word at a time.

Stitching back together time. Language a thread from the past to the present.

Each word side by side, building some kind of foundation. Maybe a parachute.

To jump, let life unfold. To stop pretending I have control.

To feel what was silenced. Memories too old to be remembered, yet never too soon to be felt .

Relax, lean in, learn to believe again.

I have never known anyone to out run time or death.

To stay in the moment. Feel a deep breath.

To be in a body that believes it is safe to exist. I can do this.

Stretching, reaching, trying.

To feel the pain.

To trust the goosebumps.

more courage required

more than I could dream

to sit in silence

to bear witness to the internal screams

the fear of fear itself

woven in story

hope does exist in some kind of surrender

that last word makes this body shiver

a hope to give more than take

to never let the song of life be silenced

writing

a gift to make beauty out of chaos, out of darkness

to lay grief at your feet dear language

for it seems to be the only relief

Never stepping into anything half way

If left undone or half assed

Only a sign, signal, or information

it wasn’t meant to be

Sunk costs keep so many of us lost

Pouring into every stroke of this pen

Risking a personal resurrection

No longer able to worship plans or blueprints

Something has been set free

painful transformation

The wings are lighter

A history has been made, yet the future exists elsewhere

A vivacity in these wings released by the possibility of what could be

A risk numbers will never measure

Never to be predicted

The gift of life, I guess

The beauty always exists

rare is the awareness

The spice of life fresh in the air

A flavor for action

A 333 average

Or trusting 1 out of three swings

Something good will happen

The words that are chosen seem to linger into the webs of fate

Memories seeping into each line

No fixed definition

Only layers of conversation

Looking for language

I need to read

I am not asking you to agree

There is something inside of me I need to feed

A darkness, a sharpness, it escapes predictability

When left unseen, it starts to bleed

But in words found on pages, ones that have existed over the ages

In story and moments of glory

I can breathe when I read

A long inhale, it never fails

When I read I remember this world is tender

When I read it leads to a curiosity

A map you cannot find unless you are in my mind

When we read it is a gift you see

You will find a piece of my imagination

When you can see inside

you may understand, relate

no more fear

My living, breathing, beating heart you will hear

It is in those sounds a magic can be found

In our imagination there is a sensation

An invisible thread between your heart and mine

Words are an extension of the greatest kind

A view of the history of humanity

A living language

One I had failed to see, until I got sick at thirty-three

There is something special about you and me

Woven into our biology

It is narrative

And imperative

It whispers so quietly

Requires a kind of silence to find it

Found in the pages written throughout the ages

In faces, places, and spaces, in time spent with the unseen, a meaning found in the mysteries that fill life with uncertainty

In the sense making, the use making, and comes without apology

It is in the etymology of poetry, found deep in threads of curiosity

Look it up

It will turn something up

You just might find a path to your creativity

Call me a witch

Call me a wizard

Or a woman, phenomenally

Look for the word under the word, the etymology of poetry

The word spelling? Comes with a history, but if you look, you may find a common tapestry

A word or a sequence of words that has an effect

Hebrew or Aramaic, you choose

Today I speak this blessing on you

Created with my words and beyond all the beckoning uncertainties

A spell against complacency crafted through poetry

Within its roots alive and porous, beautiful and hidden

A source of elemental human truths

A land of language

A guide to our internal intentionality

An ode to the etymology of poetry

Seeds of literacy that have been planted in our history, the precursor to a currency

A currency found in the power of poetry

Currency of the connection between you and me

A bite

“It was a bite I will remember.”

Words slipped from a friend’s lips

the morning after. Steam rising after each sip.

To give shape, beauty comes to exist.

Handmade, woven with intention.

This one, temporary, to be held in memory.

A cheesecake, slowly baked.

A river of raspberry.

A bite to remember

with laughter, we gathered.

A table round, the perfect path for stories to be found.

Words whispered, meaning shaped by sound.

A remembering in the food we eat,

something ancient, something sweet.

In a moment, time, no longer the enemy.

In a bite, existence became a gift.

She tasted life.

The friendship, the food.

I sit here, I write

so I can taste it twice.

Recipe

6 in Cheesecake

1 cup graham cracker crumbs

¼ cup of nuts, pecans or walnuts, ground or chopped

4 TBS unsalted butter, melted

Pinch of Kosher salt

Pinch of cinnamon

Pinch of cloves

Filling

2 (8 ounce) boxes of cream cheese (16 ounces 454 grams), at room temperature

½ cup graduated sugar (3.5 ounces or 99 grams)

¼ teaspoon kosher salt

2 large eggs, at room temperature

¼ cup (2 ounces or 57 grams) heavy cream, at room temperature

¾ teaspoon vanilla extract

Raspberry Topping

Large package of Raspberries

½ cup of honey

Lemon zest

Juice of half a lemon

Pinch of salt

It took sleepless nights to remember how to feel the breeze, the chill, or the warmth that can cross your cheek.

To remember the miracle of each petal, each leaf

Within that wonder, the signature of life, I began to ponder

Once upon my memory, 26 letters began to breathe

Weaving in an out infinitely in myth, fantasy, the unique language of my dreams

Letter by letter, word by word, steps closer to finding truth

Poetry

The goddess of remembering

She helped me feel and intuit clarity

Long before I could understand it or know it

The bridge between

Ideas and expression

Isolation and connection

Words allow me to see how my world actually exists

What happens when I witness the magic of the bees

Slow down to taste life's delicacies

The goddam loveliness of specialty cheese

24-hour bone broth made with care

It's only purpose to be shared

Curiosity for me, I simply gotta learn how to make that burrata

Fresh food grown and given, to give without hope to receive

I have found a deep layer of generosity

Poetry she gave me language, a way to experience and express my needs

Language in motion

Voices among voices

Choice after choice

Once expressed, my dear friend was there, her words and reflection, a gift of connection

Clarity, she gave me

Food is love, food is life

That is how my world exists for me

To name our truth, a responsibility

Words spoken, written, and woven

Experience

Participate

And analyze

The only universal language isn’t the one we hear, speak, or write

It is in the way we all must eat

Within gifts of nourishment, there is no “them”

Food is a place where the language of “we” can exist

To read and weep

It may be more of what we need

The words of another

Unspoken and chosen, created by hand

Read in a silence

A human brave enough to feel and receive

Courageous enough to nourish and weave written words around what is received

To touch and put name to experience

A book will know how to take your pain

Pain and delight it will take from you

And both it will return

Until it is understood

Pain and delight have always been intertwined

One does not come without the other

We read and weep

Understood in each and every story of our mothers

Time has no existence

For we can experience the mind of the living and the dead

The gift of words bound and carved, waiting to be read

Expressions of being human on the page

The power of stories

To read and weep

I have found another piece of me

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A largeness inside

No longer a whisper, no longer a scream

A moan that reverberates

It is all she has left as we have ignored her with age

A call that evaporates, we return to our cage

Moaning that seeps deep into our bones

A last effort, an unexplainable ache

Autoimmune disease, inability to sleep, irregular heartbeat

Unable to name it

We have forgotten the power of language

Bodies pushed to capacity

She moans

Not in ecstasy

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written, reaching for clarity

to the edge, the horizon, beyond what we can see

spoken, once upon our memories

woven into our creativity

the universal language rests in the food we eat

poetry, stories

to feel what is unspoken

possibilities yet to exist

Imagination’s greatest gift

nourished with the written word

carved into legacy, the echoes of our breath

Humanity’s tension comes from something lost

the language of nuance forgotten, buried, never taught

enemies, borders, and wars are the cost

when the words exist, when given life, when language is large enough

there is no them, there is only us

Are they heaven sent, or hell bent

A victim of the system or born from my convictions

Who am I to create, debate, and question what comes from the sky?

Will they ever be enough? Will they generate trust?

Are they fragments, broken and unspoken

Buried in a world of distraction and complacency

This fire lost to a desireless society

I wonder and I ponder with great expectancy, yet for you, fragments they may be

An instinct and reflex

Something lives on these pages

A thread that has existed throughout the ages

Can you feel it?

But without control how will anyone ever know the grace that is laced around these words of uncertainty

Answers, questions, or simply seeking mystery

Words give the gift of shaping the unseen

They give us something tangible yet contain the magic of the unexplainable

Words have always been a gift to keep our spirit alive to help our stories thrive

The glue between years and years history

Fragments, are they the way I write?

Like good food, words can stick to our ribs

Porous, feral, and full of life

Full of errors and mistakes, a certain kind of fate

When the spelling is less than compelling, just know these words come from a fire born of desire

Emotions that rage to find a way onto this page

Scratching and tearing

Seeking a life of repairing

Come sit with me and you will see, everything is about the mystery

All we have to do is remember to ask

It is in this space we have room for faith and a hope for our humanity

Please come sit with me, have a read, these fragments may be just what you need

You are the glue that makes them into something new, writing has always been a gift to the reader and writer

It was born of reciprocity

These poems and papers, fragments they may be

Broken with no outcome, no performance to see

But what if we change the language, in the shift of a word would all of this be heard?

Are they parts, not fragments, not broken but spoken

A voice with a choice, woven with invisibility through threads of curiosity

Threads that continue to seek mystery

They are parts, not fragments, never broken, only meant to be spoken

Carved into our reality

A way to remember what has long been forgotten

They are parts, the parts of my heart.

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I spend a lot of time reflecting on what it is I am meant to do. What, where, and in whom do I seek meaning? As I have written before, it will most likely be just outside of my reach, always. It is in the uncertainty that I seem to find my fuel for curiosity. I often wonder if I knew for sure, would I keep hunting like I am? Would I be inspired to write, seek out new people, books, and ideas if I weren’t searching for something?

Through reading the story, I have been able to reflect on the pieces of the literature that hit me emotionally. These emotions have continued to lead to some clarity. A clarity that comes and goes just enough for me to take another action.

In the reading, I seemed to access something in my heart. When I went out for a run, my mind seemed to pull from that knowledge to wrap words around the intangible and elusive. Then, as I spoke to others, my relationships seemed to encourage the clarity.

I write for myself. I write to remember. To remember that, as humans, we have an imagination. Writing is what brings me peace.

I collaborate to create. It is in collaboration with others that my imagination is at its best. Collaborating with others is what generates awe and support for wonder.

But food. Food is how I access my greatest well of generosity. Within that well is where I find the most potent fuel for my imagination. Food is how I believe in more. That things can be better, that things can be different. Food is where I access hope.

in the imagination, nothing is definite

fluid and fluctuating

shifts and pivots

26 letters, three atoms

words and water

can destroy or renew

rain and memories can give life to the unseen

they can haunt or flood us

words and water control what is forgotten

words lapping at the shores of our imaginations

water, the key to life’s hydration

each can materialize and evaporate

unseen, existing in invisibility

each thought and each drop

never to be predicted

recycling life’s mysteries

cycles in nature, cycles in history

This is the work of a junior scribe,

One of the many bards, balladeers, and storytellers who walk this earth.

We weave poems, songs, and stories out of every breath.

May you remember us.

Praise be to Nisaba

Inspired by There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elife Shafak

The greatest gift we have been given is the places, spaces, and faces we experience by accident, coincidence, or divine synchronicity

It is within those interactions that we sift through the gifts to find the goals of our souls

To witness the world, to hold the gold

To materialize what we visualize

A sense of place gives us the space to be enchanted by our limitations, which has always been the key to our vivid imagination

Like water without a glass, it is hard to drink

An imagination without clear limitations makes it hard to think

Commitment is the bridge between what doesn’t exist and the possibility of what if

The gift of duality and our capacity to read helps us hold the belief that things can be better

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Something is happening, and it feels rather frightening

Like lightning in my mind, a powerful change, what will I find?

I have heard it said that people change more by what they do than what they believe

It is in the act of rituals we may find the spiritual

Do our actions provide the container for chaos, uncertainty, the antidote for complacency?

Belief can provide relief

But it is our actions that will give us traction

In a world of distraction we have lost our rites of passage

The development of our intuition left to you and to me rather than a supportive community

We avoid the void, as we have been told, we must go it alone

Coming home has become unknown

Where is the sanctuary?

Our history has shown us that some of them can be very scary

You may say that religion we have been given

I have gone to church, but you won’t find me there.

Something is missing and must be explored, a language, a story, that has largely been ignored

This may be an objective perspective, when did the power in the sky become a guy?

When did belief become a he or a she?

Are those words that describe and separate us like a knife. Some might think it has fueled all this violence but maybe it was the cause of the silence

Complacency, complacency, this word is haunting me

I am not saying the story is wrong, no, it is just only part of the song

Like a bird with one wing, one wing wasn’t allowed to sing,

With only half, how could we ever get along. Something is lost when we assign the word “he”

Hidden treasure buried long ago because it came through the voice of a she

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Devotion to belief

A mistake in history, a clinging to intolerance and scarcity

Devotion to faith

It opens a gate, a word full of meaning

Access to trust and uncertainty

A space to breathe

To stay in the moment

Do not try to predict the prophecy

Stay open to surprise

Unexpected destinations

No straight river or life has ever existed

Keep swimming

We don’t have to drown in complacency

Things can be different

Things can be better

Have faith

Imagination can shorten the distance

A thread of connection between stories

In communities with many beliefs

A solution exists that is yet to be seen

When hands become dirty digging for truths

Faith

A flute built of stories

An instrument, finely tuned

Calibrated for truth

Whatever that may be