Friday, April 26, 2013

Chrysalis

Change is coming. It has begun. I can feel something cracking open in my chest. I rationalise that this will be good for me. I will emerge from this like a butterfly from a chrysalis. But now... right now it hurts. I want to curl up in a dark, quiet place and cradle my hurting parts.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Yellow

Today it's cold enough
for knee-high boots
and the yellow scarf
that makes my heart lift
time for dry leaves
crunching underfoot
like the bones of faeries
feeling greedy with autumn sunshine

Friday, April 5, 2013

The woman I am/sleepwalking

I have a crush on someone at the moment. The kind where I sometimes drop something I'm carrying just because  this person smiles at me. The kind where I forget how to be the intelligent, mostly articulate adult I usually manage to be. An infatuation that persists despite (or perhaps because of) my attempts to logic myself out of it.

I haven't had one for a long time. I have to stop and calculate how long it's been since I felt this way. When it comes to looking for a partner or 'finding love' (that phrase still puzzles me, for I don't know how or where to look) I have been sleepwalking. Sometimes deliberately, sometimes just out of long habit.

It chagrins me somewhat to realise that in this, I feel as much my awkward adolescent self as ever. My best friend reassures me laughingly that this is normal, that it never goes away. And perhaps that is the point.

The woman I am is the girl I was. I have learned, I have grown but I also stay the same. If I am to be loved, I must be known wholly. If I am to be known I must not hide the parts of myself that might not fit with the facade, with an idea of who I should be or how I might be more loveable.

I can't tell jokes because I always forget them. My most comic moments are usually unintentional. I shake my fist at the sky in mock frustration.

I watch Star Trek tv marathons on Thursday nights. If I had to choose a favourite movie character it would be Amelie. I go to poetry readings alone and don't talk to anyone unless they talk to me first.

I shave my legs even though I don't believe I should have to, because I've never outgrown the horror of having my leg hair pointed out by school bullies.

As a university student, I started cutting my own hair with sewing scissors. I still do (with better scissors).

I throw my head back when I laugh. My laugh sounds more and more like my mother's. She is one of my best friends.

I flinch when people honk their car horns, and the imprint of it stays with me for hours. I drive a little pink car and snarl under my breath at bad drivers.

I can read a good novel in less than a day. I've been writing poetry for 18 years.

How much knowing is needed before it turns into love?