chorleya

[chorleya]

[chorleya]

[chorleya]

At the Dinner Table

We eat like people with backs

turned, in the same room but never speaking

Tongues rolled into dry mouths

Facing food stead of eyes, fingers on forks,

Scrapping,

Cleaning plates

Until there is nothing left

to consume

[chorleya]

Simple Geography

(in response to “Shut Up and You Know I Love You” by Taylor Mali)

I am from burned

on bracelets and stretched

thin summer days, sweating

until blood runs

instead of salt water. From dirt

and scraped knees and books, broken

pencils, and playground

games. I am from growing

up too soon, sprouting seeds without  

roots, without knowing what

that means. From when foreign

fingers slipped in: recoil; recoil

still when they are familiar. I am from closed

legs and lips and skirts that lay just so, heels

and braids tucked back

where they belong. I am from secret

fists and red-eyed rage, from spit

and shout and scream. From closed

doors, closets and picked over

scabs, daydreams running

into nightmares running

into days running on. I am from masks,

music notes, and laughter, dimples dodging

in and out. From words not working

anymore. From dried up, spilled out

making red wine stains on white carpet.

I am from give until nothing is left. From long

letters that explain little, but like

a cartographer’s trailing eyes, I am going to

remember; I am from forget.

[chorleya]

Ruth: Fifteen

Ruth says, “fifteen,” now brushing away the tangled knots,

Was when mirrors talked back, throwing insults and sideways glances

And boys with gelled hair threw rocks at windows

Just to make a sound, after their mouths were stopped

By overflowing wastepaper baskets of quiet conversations.  

"Fifteen” was her year for lost kisses and tears on cool

Linoleum, when her mother made her pack a bag

Like Peter Pan to fly away, destination anywhere but the kitchen floor. Friends

Moved on, days grew long, and the television spoke war to empty

Walkways calling for those boys to pick up guns and join

The long, stretching shadows. Fifteen, one of them did. The thunder

Fisted boy from algebra was captured by an ancestral nightmare

Mindset, Ruth says. “Fifteen” was when the world went mad

And her cell phone stopped ringing. A park bench transformed

Into a rigid reminder of loneliness. But “stark” is a perspective

That only neatly lined worlds have so she colored her compass

Gray. Fifteen is a blacked out date, blooming ink on a calendar page

And a gravestone at a cemetery covered in snow

[chorleya]

Survivor’s Guilt

I dreamt I could fly into the clouds

away from all the noise

below, but I chose to come down and save

the world from itself instead

I woke up to read about sirens screaming

over people’s voices, smoke

billowing upward. Paris is crying,

the news anchors said. Someone shot her children

The city of light went dark

last night. Over a hundred dead.

Where am I when hurricanes

roll towards foreign fronts and earthquakes

shake others, when refuges wash up dead

on someone else’s shore trying

to escape their own, when fists are raised in riots

and some cities are torn in terrorist plots?

I am safe in my bed. I am reading about the hurt

in the world and experiencing so little of it, the light

turned on, sipping my coffee

until it turns cold

[chorleya]

I do believe in an everyday sort of magic—the inexplicable connectedness we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art and the like; the eerie appropriateness of moments of synchronicity; the whispered voice, the hidden presence, when we think we’re alone.

 Charles de Lint  (via ignitelight) (via portermoto)

[chorleya]

Just a reminder I’m still writing for my new album, but here’s an old demo of a song I wrote the day after my trip to Chicago back in January. Enjoy! <3

Blue and Gray written & composed by Daniela Andrade

V1

I’m feeling tired with myself all the pieces disconnected I’m trying hard to set it straight head on shoulders my eyes forward (chorus) I wanna feel I wanna feel blue and gray I wanna feel I wanna feel patterns fade I wanna feel I wanna feel like all the plans that I made came to be V2 I hear the conversations round people finding who they’re wanting I spin the wheel of what i’ll get keep on ending on the spaces in between and…

Bridge: spinning circles round and round beat my knees into the ground spinning circles round and round beat my knees into the ground

xo - D

[chorleya]

"When I started, these rocks were bathed in light. Now they’re just shadowy masses. So I have to decide how I want to remember them."