quarters

i am

womyn/split into quarters/one tongue cut/loving self in halves
.

hello.

have we met?

i am

wahine/my ea mud rooted /trace me in pō/fragments of moana scattered

.

aloha.

have you seen me?

i am

onna/a silent noh-daiko/Nihon buyo does not move here/ai is a foreign cage

.

kon'nichiwa

have you remembered me?

i am

mulher/um barco em uma cova/lábios touching air/are these bones not dead yet?

.

olá

have you noticed me?

i am

nǚrén/my skin is Nǎinai de gǔhuī/Wǒ de xīnzàng shǔ huǒ/laugh at this subtle breath

.

wait

have i forgotten me?/

am i forgetting me?/

have i not met my own diaspora?/

am i not noticing my own river?/

is my river dried?am i just a ship in a grave? is my heart just a flicker of a flame? if i drink my ancestor's ashes will my skin remember them?

have/ we/ met/

yet?

 

 

 

FYIWW

For the rights to free write/ramblings at work/its been a long day/soundcloud playlist: Smoke_mirrors.

 

Drew Anthuny sings two octaves low enough to puncture all my feelings in the gut. The beat is as slow as vino dripping off a crystal glass. The beat is what all hearts aspires to be. I am listening to one song on repeat. I am reflecting on repeat. Tropical Storm heading northeast. 12th one this season. Going back to Cali in a few weeks. Organizing festival in november. Coordinating Intergenerational Coming out Stories event this weekend. Check in with seven high schools around the island. 12 hour work days. Mail poetry books to horizons I may never see. This life is a storm I don't mind getting lost in. Man, I want to go back to therapy. The present is a beast. I am loving myself beauty. Where am i going with this free write? Rule number 1 of pacific tongues workshop: Be in the moment. Write down whatever is in your head. There is a cacophony of clutter in my mind. All I have been able to write about lately is blue, rivers, the sea. Bodies of water, bodies, water, me. Shades of love I am continuously learning to allow, to explore, to be open with. I bought a ticket to California. Funny. I just went to California a few months back. Told myself I wouldn't go back for another two years. Then Universe teaches lessons. Never make plans, never say never. When you ask for something, be specific. When you think you got it figured out. Think again. The punchline is in the unexpected. The punchline is in the poetry. Its always been the poetry. What are we poets but the illustrator of jokes. and yet. Hafiz once wrote, "Even After All this time, The Sun never says to the Earth, "You owe me." Look what happens With a love like that, it lights the whole sky."

After Bluets

After Maggie Nelson's "Bluets"

"239. But now you are talking as if love were a consolation. Simone Weil warned otherwise. "Love is not consolation," she wrote. "It is light."
240. All right then, let me try to rephrase. When I was alive, I aimed to be a student not of longing but of light. "  - Bluets pg.95Maggie Nelson

 

1. Before the West came, Hawaiians did not have a word for the color blue.  Instead, the word Moana existed. Moana, a word used to describe the deepest shades of blue in the sea. To accommodate English language speakers, Hawaiians created the word Polu to describe blue for eyes, clothing and western objects.

2. "You take a lot of photos of the sea, don't you ever get tired of it?" He asked her.
"Every time I see her, she's a different shade of blue. Almost like she's putting on a new dress just for me. I take picture of her to remember what she looks like on days when I feel too much like concrete & city lights." she replied.
"You sound like you're in love."
"Yes, I sound like I'm home."

3. My first year living in San Francisco depression grew inside of me as ifthere was a leak in my ceiling and home was beginning to flood. Weeks had gone by before I found myself at Ocean beach. There, I realized that the sea is where I had died last and where I was born again. Many moons had gone by while living in the bay where I felt like I was drowning. Ironic, that I was never in the water.

4. It is scientifically known that the color blue doesn't come easily because true blue pigment don't exist in plants. Instead, other pigments and plant minerals combine with wavelengths of light to create the colors people see. Among all the purples, violets and reds, some naturally blue flowers result.

5. "Vincent van Gogh, whose depression, some say, was likely related to temporal lobe epilepsy, famously saw and painted the world in almost unbearably vivid colors. After his nearly unsuccessful attempt to take his life by shooting himself in the gut, when asked why he should not be saved, he famously replied, "the sadness will last forever." I imagine he was right." - bluets pg. 36

6. There are many days when I wake feeling like a phantom 5,000 leagues under the sea. On those days, happiness doesn't come easily. Instead, other pigments of love and hope combine in wavelengths of light to create colors people see in me. Among all of the smiles and laughter, some natural blues bloom as a result.

7. A month after I broke up with my love of 2 years I shaved half of my head. My body needed to shed something from that phase of my life like petals from a bouquet of violets falling in autumn . My eyes did not want to look at the same face that was once madly in love that was now feeling "blue" (sad). This past summer marked an entire year since remembering what it was like to love myself before anyone else. Thus, I dyed my hair blue. Before I could even see a touch of blue in my hair, I had to first bleach it many times, killing each strand. The jar labels the shade i picked, "Voodoo blue" a cross between indigo and electric with a hint of green to make the dark royals feel a little more like the tide hitting the reef at noon. The sea is where I had died last and where I was born again.

8. "Why do you paint your face such monstrous things?" He asks her.
"Because for a moment in time, I can show the world what the inside of this body feels like. I can show the world how even the villains we hold in us can be beautiful too." She replied.
"Because the bad guys have more fun?" He assumed.
"Because the bad guys are just the good guys that no one believed in." She said.
"So you paint to tell the other side of the story we all got? Is that right?"
"I paint because not all stories are told one way. Or are even told at all. Some stories are just a brush stroke open for translation. And most times I don't feel like a writer. I just feel like a woman with puddles of colors begging to cover skin."

9.  “Oceania is vast, Oceania is expanding, Oceania is hospitable and generous, Oceania is humanity rising from the depths of brine and regions of fire deeper still, Oceania is us. We are the sea, we are the ocean…” - Epeli Hau'ofa

10. When I say I am feeling blue.
It no longer means that I am sad.
What I mean is that I am vast
and endless.

 

 

For the past we honor and put to rest

1.
the past is a river dried up a mud trench easy to follow backwards

2.
to truly love in the present
we must honor the past
beyond the path lays a meadow
of lilacs
for ghosts to be put
to rest. tell old love,
"i will meet you here"
 

3.
mail a collection of poems
to every fist full of heart
that once dug a trench,
that once became a flower, now
an apparition
for memory.

 

4.
sometimes
poems are the open fields
we arrive at as if saying,
"I have met you here before.
this time,
i am not writing you between lines."
sing a song to the wind
every hymn a reminder
that love once lived
between lines.

5.
you will write old loves a thank you
note on the inside of a book
a goodbye memento. now in different
costumes. no longer
smeared in gin n tonics,
cigarette smoke or sand
between toes.
old love will not reach for
hip or face or hand anymore.
you think,
"good. i did not want to remind you
why we no longer share the same scent."

6.
fill a chalice with rain
pour it over face
tell yourself
a year ago this cup
was filled with tears.
today,
it is filled with light
falling down on you.
this is why the river is

dried up.


6.
love is never a consolation prize
to be won.
love is always light
the river may dry
but follow it and there
you find the open sea.

7.
you were always the open sea.
the only prize needed
to be found.

 

Opening Up

In response to "Letting go" by Gloria Anzaldua

when opening up
ourselves, remember to start
at the naval. claw
away at belly, nails first.
watch ocean spill out
then the wasps, bees, and honey,
followed by wildfire.
Do not be afraid of all
the songs caged inside of us.
It was never about the cage
It was always about the bird.

when opening up
ourselves, once is not enough.
the spider webs cling
to muscle--memories soft,
scrape the rim of intestine.
pull serpents out
by their fangs as they try to
slither up to heart.
cut off heads, watch them grow
two more. our dark multiplies.
cradle all the mess
poured onto the floor.

when opening up
ourselves, twice is not enough.
-Light evaporates.
-gold is taken by strangers
-we will feel empty.
raise our white flag hands
listen to our hollowed
bodies cry a conch shell scream.
a song we dance to
when all the birds have vanished.
 

Names

My name is an intersection I am still learning how to navigate. Jocelyn Kapu'mealani Ng. A compass pointing in 4 directions at the same time. When I first meet someone, I keep my introductions on the surface. "Hi my name is Jocelyn." It is simpler this way. Jocelyn is easy on the tongue. No ocean, no riptide. Jocelyn is Catholic churches and Sunday school. Jocelyn is private university English degree at her finest. Jocelyn is 3 years of teaching ESL. Jocelyn is perfect English sentence structure and pronunciation. The youngest out of 6 children. With 4 girls preceeding, Jocelyn would have been Joseph if born a boy. Joseph after her father's father, a man who drank himself to the grave, a man of intimate affairs, an abuser, these are all the stories I have heard of Joseph. Luckily, I am not this name. I am Jocelyn. I am queer mixed womyn that does not know how to speak the tongues of her ancestors. Jocelyn is learning. I am learning. But you will find my family and friends calling me Joce. Joce is not pronounced 'jock' or 'josh' or 'josey' or 'joyce'. But Like Joss. Like Joss stone the singer. I hate that reference but its the only one my friends in the states can wrap their tongues around. Joce is not as polite as Jocelyn. Joce is rough around the edges, smoke dreams, and late night dancing til only sweat remembers the name. Jocelyn is poet and awards and diplomas. Joce is dismantled ego, once a month therapy sessions and contemplations of suicide. Joce is past lovers' nickname for a woman who didn't know how to hold all the parts of herself. Joce has forgiven and is forgiven. Joce is in the process.

Kapu'mealani (Kah-Pooh-May-Ah-Lah-Knee), my mother would whisper in my ears as a child, "you are my sacred one from heaven. My Kapu'mealani." Before I was born my mother had a miscarriage. The doctors told her that she would not have any more children. One night, my eldest sister Kahea had a dream that woke her up in the dark. she told my grandmother that she met her new sister that was not born yet. That we would meet very soon. My grandmother called my mother and asked if she was pregnant. My mother went to doctor and found out that I was in her belly. My mother reminds me of this memory every blue moon, so i remember how much sacred is in this flesh. Four years after I was born my mother had a second miscarriage. She said she knew I would be the last drop of her brought into this lifetime. Kapu'mealani, sacred one from heaven. Named after a great aunt that held sacredness in our family tree. This is my responsibility now. So Kapu'mealani can trace her Hawaiian side back 7 generations before last names were brought by the west. Before my people needed a second name to know who we were. But I am still learning these roots. Still trying to grasp onto responsibility because most people in Hawai'i do not see Hawaiian when they look at me. I am a mixed bag of flavors they rarely can name. In the states i am only Asian in their eyes. In Hawaii i am unknown. So Kapu'mealani stays hidden, silent, unknown to strangers at first encounters.

Ng (pronounced like 'ing'), my father's last name. Ng is sugar plantations and fishermen tired. Ng was once Young three generations back. But plantations do not care about names. So they cut it in half. Like cutting off lineage. Like cutting off language. Ng survived the massacre. And Ng no longer spoke Chinese. Today, Ng is strong drinking habits and rambling stories. Ng is a reminder, to remember what we once were before colonialism took away the intangible. Names.

Names, the first sacred space our parents let us live in. Names will pull you out of a crowd, will be the arms that love you, will remind you of home and all the home you have never known. Names will transport you to the Azores Islands in Portugal, then to Kamuela on the south side of Hawai'i island, then will have you backpacking in search of the last motherlands of China, and finally to Japan where you will bite your tongue hoping to find pieces of your mother's father. Names left their homes a long time ago. Names will call you back to your own skin. Will be the message in a bottle that traveled long distances. Names will be the map when you are lost. Names will always be more than just words.

On memory//what haunts us//what saves us//and the dust collecting in the spaces inbetween.

Memory is a glass cabinet, locked.

it is a museum we mummify ourselves in
a place where we can always admire from afar
but never touch again.

the past is fine china serving scars & silver smiles on the same plate

this is why you can still taste the first time she kissed you.
and why you can still stomach heart break in one gulp.
how these memories shift you,
move you, change you, make you into ghost or angel,
martyr or prophet, stubborn mule or grand master.
Do you pick at the wounds of old mistakes
or have healed from it?
Do you enjoy hurting others the way you were hurt?
or did that hurt, make you love harder?
who are you today?

Are you memory buried in skin?

Has time healed you?

can we miss a memory that hasn't been made yet?
can we fall in love with memories that haven't manifested?

A few months ago, i thought i was falling in love.
with soul that i have own for thousands of years.
i realized
that this life time is not meant to be stagnant in the idea of waiting
for a body to bend time.

We only remember people at the ages we last saw them.

 

25 Days of Reflection Before Turning 25

Day 25 - In Transition

This final post on reflecting is long over due. But as the old cliche goes - 'better late than never' i suppose. How appropriate that I am in the middle of change.

I am chrysalis again. I wrapping myself up in the colors I once was and shedding it with the wind. Tomorrow is my final day at a job I've been doing for the past 3 years. I've reached the top in my position. I've gained the knowledge I've sought after. Tomorrow after 12:00, I will be free. What a bittersweet taste to digest. But change is on the horizon. I can already feel it. Change job. Change hair color. Change clothing. Change visions of love. Change physical health. Change to grow, improve, evolve. Because what kind of person would i be if i was the same as last year? last month? yesterday? I've worn many costumes in my lifetime thus far. I've been hip hop high tops and skinny jeans. I've been fohawk and big earrings. I've been bay area swag and USF glam. I've been femme dandy and ethereal modern. Each represented a time where I saw the world differently. Onto the next. What will blue hair & tailored clothes bring? Raise your chin, put some lipstick on, some war paint to show em how queer girls rock. Tell the honeys, the queen is turning the hive into a kingdom. And I'm waiting around for someone to tell me how sweet this is. Blessed be the change. Blessed be 25 and focused. Give the village the love it deserves. Give yourself the love you deserve. Rise and be the sky.

25 Days of reflecting before turning 25

Day 24 - SZA got me like. damn.

"Ice under my heels, I hear it breaking
Under my heels, I hear it cracking
Foolish of me to think I had it
Emmanuel, how foolish of me
To think I had it..
I hear your voice behind me
Moving up my neck
I hear you talking
Creeping on my shoulder
I hear you breathing
In my head I hear you screaming
Just do it.."
                        -SZA

The tempo be smooth. Drums pound like sweat on concrete. Voice lingering. What happened to surrendering girl? What happened to Universe? Rebellion. The tide be rising. This body, too much ocean. Too much salt to know dry land. Foolish of me to think I had it.

25 Days of Reflection Before turning 25

Day 23 - Recollecting myself

in the past few days I've been in a cluster. Been feeling too much like confetti. too much like scattered thought. Too much like body contortionist pulled in five direction. Too much like sand. Too much like sand in hour glass. Too much like rising tide. 6 days left of teaching. Picking up more hours as manager. Surrendering to possibilities. Rising to the responsibility of coordinator. So much family home. Beginning to feel the depression slowly crawling its way up my toes. The new moon running through me. Too much dark. Mercury in retrograde. I need space. Need to get away. Feel like becoming running deer. Feel like chasing myself into the shadows. Messaged my therapist today. Need to acknowledge my own process. Must call myself out. Must actively work on self care. Search for the light. Who am I today? I looked in the mirror this morning and felt like shambles. Where is my mind taking me? Why does my heart feel like ravine? Feel like crack in the earth. Feels like I'm split three ways with no where to call home. Who am I today? I don't know. I didn't recognize myself. Too tired to notice me. Too tired to be strong today. I'm in the process. I'm still processing.

25 Days of Reflection Before Turning 25

Day 22 - Oh to be a poet.

What greater gift & what grander curse it is for a poet to turn a person into a poem. To have the memory of them to live forever. A sorry attempt at immortality. On one perspective they are but a firefly caught in a mason jar. Seen as just a bright and magnificent thing to admire. On the other hand, fireflies cannot survive in glass. The brilliance becomes but a cadaver of what it used to be. A relic of sorts. Something to look at on a wall in a museum. A time capsule memory to remember on drunken nights. A thought in a day. A body to resurrect on stage. A memory to relive so others can connect with it. This is what it means to turn someone into a poem.

25 days of reflection before turning 25

Day 21 - On Surrendering to the Universe.

"five days under water.."

Sahmeer from young the giant has a way of singing "islands" that leaves me feeling like a heart drying up in an hourglass desert.

this isn't the first time you'll find me writing to the mood of the vast blue.
here is it universe.
i am five days underwater. i am floating off the coasts. i am no longer pursuing the mermaids that siren call the night into becoming sky. i am taking the poems written for one and turning to the realization that they have always been poems for all.
that they have always been poems written for myself.
to me.
for me.
for the girl crushing on time like hammer.
for the woman waiting to be more than what could have been.
i am still learning how to be honest with all the parts of myself. you would think age and distance would do something to a girl learning how to love herself. it's a funny thing,
time. it allows for transformation. once we think we've figured ourselves out, we're onto the next skin that has yet to be shed.
we got too many gods living inside of us to be just one thing at a time.
i am
learning how time doesn't work in our favors all too often. i am relearning patience.  a different kind of wait.
the kind  of time  that only  has to offer empty hands and faces that blur.
clocks are beginning to look that way too.
empty hands and faces that blur.
patience like living in the wrong time zone. on the wrong street. in the wrong ocean.
how the wind is the only woman to push you forward, to grace your face against sea breeze.
how you, are the only love you needed at a quarter century of breath.

Sahmeer sings, the drums play, the waves crash, the phone does not ring. No one is home. I have loved all the ghosts away and forgiven them to the sun. This is not the same poem as written four years ago. There are no more haunting here. There is no candle light on the porch to guide the lost home. Instead, there is just the dust collecting on the window panes. There busy bodies becoming more shadow than company. The bed is not made, the dishes have not been washes, the sand has not been swept out of the room. I am too much go to stay. Too gone to be in one place now days. Too much care for the village to clean the home. I will say that i am not looking for love out here. but what kind of lie would that be? We are human aren't we? We long for touch. For connection beyond friendship. For flint spark and electricity to combust between two beings. We secretly want to know if someone can make forest fire in the attics of hearts. In the hidden places where we hide so many heirlooms of ourselves. Want to know if someone will discover our world and make it flat again.

Maybe i am scaring myself writing this. fearful of what eyes would gaze here. Do I sound lonely? And why would I be afraid to sound lonely? What loneliness but time with ourselves we have not become comfortable with. There is difference between lonely and being alone.

What would you think of me then?
Do you see yourself between the lines here?
Do you smirk?
Did you read this twice and find something different each time?

But this is just another rant. Another freewrite. Another day to watch the days pass and write the salt out of me.
Tonight, I surrender to you Universe. I am longer chasing fantasy. I will be what is to be. What you may have in store for me. Let it come if it must. And let it stay and float off the shores with me if it may. I run until the sweat is pouring off skin. cry until the levees have dried. and i will swim in the sea until i am reminded of how much island i truly can and will always be.


 

 

 

 

25 Days of Reflection Before Turning 25

Day 19 - Dear World

Dear World,
If I could hold your wounds in my hands without having it leak....

I am trying to hold onto so much, trying to stand in solidarity in more than one place. Baltimore, Mauna Kea, West Papua, Nepal, how many more of the nameless that didn't make the headlines this week.

Dear World,
What is my capacity? Am I any less of an ally on these issues if i do not post about them on facebook? If I do not repost an image on instagram? if I do not write about it on this blog? I am trying to understand the best ways to give voice when I feel so distant.

Dear World,
What do I tell you I did with all of this distance? I am watching billion dollar companies mine the earth's heart. I am watching Scientists attempt to build over sacred land. I am watching mother earth's heart quake taking thousands of innocent lives. I am watching men of "authority" take thousands of innocent black lives. I am watching old men make their sons fight for the greed nestled in their chests. I am watching villages burn, ravaged, turned into twigs and ash.

Dear World,
There is hope marching towards us. I have seen it too. I have seen the thousands rise. I have seen them turn the tide. I have heard the silence break. I have watched capitalism burn. I have heard the chants brings ancestors back with the wind. I have watched the dances decolonize the western grin. I have seen the hands reaching out. The bodies heal. The Voices crack. The fists raise. The peace held. The news does not televise the revolution properly. But I see it, see them, see you, see all the possibilities.

25 Days of Reflection Before Turning 25

Day 18 - On Being More

"You've never been good at being only one thing at a time" - Rajiv Mohabir

I cried today. I needed to cry today. The work schedule was building up, the sleep was becoming less, the pressure kept tightening, the responsibility was so high. I burst into tears after picking up my sister and brother-in-law from the airport. The 80 hour work week, managing red earth, working as a ESL teacher, grant applications due soon, meetings with teachers, helping family, being there for community, these are not bad circumstances & jobs to deal with. But when the pressure builds, its only natural to burst like a shaken bottle of soda.

So I cried today. And it was a reminder of how much release my body craved. A reminder that I am child from the sea, that is why these tears taste of salt. That I am islander. That I am so much sky, and land, and dirt, and ocean that I am capable of doing so much at once. So much that I lose sight in the dark clouds. But as islander, navigating back to the core, to the center, back to focus is all inside of me. As islander, stars guide not maps.

Today I cried and everything inside of me felt a little more at peace.

 

 

 

25 Days of Reflection before Turning 25

Day 17 - On water, light & the wind. And what they say to me.

Break open my faucet mouth. Out leaks droplets of truth held inside these bones. I am desert dry with a mirage that love is waiting for me. It is not. I am waiting for it. There is a difference.
When I realized this,

light became womyn. She was radiant as aurora borealis. She spoke of god as if god lived through her. Light calls me from a distance. Reminds me of how powerful I am. Allows me to be unafraid of hurt, of darkness, of pain. Allows me to be brave. You can't hold light though. You feel it but you can't grasp onto it. Light then grabbed my spirit and said "we are one in the same" and I believed her. And I believe her.

Then I met water. Water was a womyn that helped the seeds grow beyond the weeds. Knew roots like kalo, like giving tree, like give me knowledge to trace me back to community. Water be gentle. Water be soft and kind. Be a reminder of thirst. Be the sea that feeds. Be the hand to reach. When water speaks it knows the language of mother earth. Water's hands be like bark. Be more dirt. Be fluid. Be river. Be tangible for a moment. And water said, follow me from the mountain to the sea. I am still walking through the weeds.

And when the wind came, she came as womyn. Came as sea breeze. Comes and goes whenever she please. The wind does not speak like light or like water, the wind is a mystery. The unknown so tantalizing. She does not come when you want her to. She comes when she feels like it. And you can't be mad when she leaves. Because when she came and whispers into your ear secrets of heart, even if just for a moment, it was everything you asked for. You just forgot to ask for how long it would last. So the wind moves quickly and stops. She will come back again and when she does do not try to capture it in a mason jar. Let her breathe you into life.

 

25 Days of Reflection Before turning 25

Day 16. Understanding. Perspective. Freewrite

The bull rages towards us only seeing
red like busted knuckles kissing a brick wall
Ravaging the dirt, running blindly
horns like aggression
roars like hurt
like pain
like lonely

I am no matador
I do not wear ruby slippers or scarlet lips.
today I wear the sky.
I wear open and light
sun made for the horizon
unclench your eyes.
Do you see it?

The different shades bleeding through the red?
can you feel it?
There is no anger here.
Only understanding.
There is no accusation here.
Only interpretation.
There are no knives or weapons.
Only open palms.

I will not hug the bull,
I will let it free.
So that
Maybe one day it will know
peace.

25 Days of Reflection Before Turning 25

Day 15 - Community.

Yesterday I had the most bone shaking reminder of what community is. As I watched a youth's life crumble through eviction, as I watched her mother carry bags and walking stick, as I saw the tears flowing of hopelessness. Sometimes, the darkness is so scarey it paralyzes us into believing that no one will come. But hope is a lighthouse in the distance that guides us to safety. As I then saw community step up and be the candlelight needed to clear vision. I witnessed phone calls be made, resources being pulled, spaces being held. I was reminded of how important this work is. Not just to create spaces in which youth voices can be elevated. But moments like these, where we must practice what we preach. That if we truly are a community, then we must be there for the folks within it when times get tough. So many people shy away and ignore it. Maybe that is their capacity for handling tough situations. I can't be mad at them for that. But if I am my mentor's student, if I am to be the facilitator that I dream of becoming, then I must do more than just give voice. I must do action in any way that I can. Whatever I could offer. I did. I will. And I will always try.

25 Days of Reflection Before Turning 25

Day 14 - Self Care.

I calculated my work hours for April 13 - April 21st and I'll be racking in 81hrs. From working as an ESL teacher, to managing my sister's massage business while she's out of town, to the outreach coordinating for Pacific Tongues, my stress levels feel a little off the wire. Not because these jobs give me stress but because of the constant 'go' of it all. I love my jobs, I love the folks I get to work with. I love the experiences they give me. What stresses me out is not being able to take a moment to smell the roses, to breathe, to release.

Today, I had a 2 hour break inbetween jobs, and I decided to get a massage by Rhonda at Red Earth. She is amazing. I literally just got out of it and my body feels like its a jellyfish. I'm on cloud9. I could feel her release all the tension building up inside of me. Her hands applying the perfect pressure to unlease it. Shit, i was drooling onto the floor as my body laid faced down. That's how relaxed I was. It was the first time in a long time where I could just focus on my breathing, on letting muscles sink, on not having to think about grades, or emails, or meetings, or memorizing poetry. It was the first time in a long time, I allowed someone to take care of me, to let me body heal physically. I think it's a practice I am learning. Rhonda told me after the massage was over that she said a spiritual blessing for me to be able to release my stress in more productive ways. She said she could feel it all built up in my shoulders and neck. I understand why. It's because of my work. I speak. My vocal chords are in my upper body. It feels good to have someone pin point where it builds in your body. See healing mentally, I've got balanced through therapy. Healing creatively, I've got balanced through my poetry community. But healing physically has always been something I put on the back burner. Today, I understand why it is so necessary. Our bodies are our vessels. They hold everything we feel in. We must try to practice these acts of self care more often. To take care of our bodies physically, mentally, creatively, spiritually. If we do not take care of ourselves, how can we expect to take care of anybody else?

25 Days of Reflection Before Turning 25

Day 13 - A Reflection to Future Love

Dear future love,

I am womyn in the constant process of healing. The constant process of learning how to love myself and all of my transformations. I am poet made of tangled words and quicksand. I get tied up in the things I say and sink so fast when love presents itself. I have loved through war. I know what battlefield feels like on organs and I know the organ song played when love dies. I know the softness found in barbed wire fences and all the truth waiting to be released inside of me. I am looking for someone who will speak my tongue into the language of our own gods. I looking for someone to grow with, to hold space with, to inspire and dream under all the constellations. Let us spend our lives renaming all the stars after memories we manifest together. I would give you the best of me, knowing you would get the best of me, knowing that you wouldn't give it back. Would you do the same? This life is an hourglass, sand slowly slipping through the cracks of our hands. Will you build a castle with me? Will you be there to help raise the village? Most people want a kingdom, want to rule the world with someone, want to conquer love and all that belongs to it. I do not want that. Empires fall. Conquering something consists of war and pillaging. I want a love that will raise villages, that will care, take care and be cared for. I want to let love be the vessel in which the Universe speaks through us in all of its most brilliant shades. I want love to be flawed, to be worked on, to be a constant process that does not feel like a marathon but rather an adventure. I want love that is organic. That is not forced. That is patient. That is not illusion. That is all raw and honest. I want you all raw and honest. 

So dear future love,
When we meet, let us not shy away with fear of getting hurt. Let us not let past scars taint our vision of what love should and can be. Let us grow. Let us try new things. Let us explore the unknown. Let us love loud and unafraid. Let us love and learn. Let us never get too comfortable. Let us always break the limits of what everything thought love could be. Let us be.

Sincerely,
Jocelyn