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[toggerton]

Patience is a not a virtue

She is strength and perseverance, bows only to herself

Patience is balancing within your own world, to ride the waves as they crash against you

It shows in her eyes, thinly veiled flames burn away her expressions

She is tense, prepared to strike at any moment. Coiled springs and jarred lightning

Nobody knows if she’ll wait forever.

Patience is the only alternative to madness.

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I don’t have to change the world

I just want to know love

Nobody needs to remember my name

I only ask that I can support myself and those around me

With love comes with grief, infinitely entwined from the beginning of it all

Surely it isn’t too much to ask; enough to survive? I don’t need everything, just enough

Going through this life with grace and empathy is a rarity, cause for cosmic change in its own right

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How else am I to measure my memories

But by the rings of grief that I’ve grown through?

Sweet springs and summers

Long forgotten in favor of the wildfire burns and lightning strikes.

A cruel joy found in pruning my own rotted branches

No longer burdened by their scars or weight

Knowing all that comes from opening such a wound to my heartwood.

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One more day? A weekend?

Oh, next month…

The only truth was that;

in complete disregard for the natural flow of time

(Thick, honeyed tea)

It could be seconds or lifetimes away

And no less weight was carried at either time.

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Let me warm your lap with the weight of my desire

Dazed in an unbreakable trance

Storm clouds peer down on ancient oak groves

Unwavering foundation challenged by ravaging forces.

Crashing of teeth, power struggle

In the eye of the storm, they find safety in each other

Reliable and sturdy, driven by thirst to keep such a canopy afloat.

Brutal and refreshing, desperate for something to anchor to.

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What could be sweeter than a sun-kissed cloud-chaser catching you in her stormy eyes? Leather and orange blossoms haunt my dreams.

Atop her saddle, her smile flashes from underneath the brim of her hat. Electric.

Hands calloused and dry in their grip around smooth leather reigns. Her mount confident and precise with every stomp of his hooves. You feel them in your chest. Thundering.

A nod and she’s off, crashing down the path after the sunrise. Leather tassels crack in the wind. Until hooves are worn and the horizon is gone. Endless.

Early spring is her favorite. Fresh life in every direction. Foggy citrus groves in bloom. Fawns and calves hidden in the wet grass. Pure.

You’ll only ever have her for a moment. Whispering western winds call her home to her people. She lingers, showering you with her affection, an all-consuming presence. Her chilled touch is the only thing that soothes your weary bones. Revitalizing.

There’s nothing quite like the aching thirst you carry in her absence. Any day she’ll break the horizon to rush back into your world, washing your worries away.

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Evening trails her cool touch across the prairie

Soothing salve across burnt skin

I can see her freckles now, amber flecks adorn her shoulders

A thousand minuscule kisses, scattered across her jaw

Wildflowers in her hair, she lays her head among a pillow of fog

Dusk pulls her blanket snugly across the sky, pricked with starlight

The moon wakes to watch over her sleep.

[toggerton]

These are proving to be taxing trials.

Are we testing my willpower?

My constitution, perhaps?

Surely I’ve paid my dues by now…

[toggerton]

What is feminine rejection, if not fighting girlhood tooth and nail, only later to realize you’re grown now and should know more things about yourself.

How do I dress to feel less boyish? To be less a clone of my father?

Shouldn’t I have had romantic relationships by now? What else is there to do with hair? And what the shit is mascara?

Raised as an eldest son, burdened as the eldest daughter. Are we surprised I’m lagging behind?

What more of me is left to give?

My inner child, bruised into submission. Longing for her time back. Are we taking from her?

My inner teen, bitter and brimming with rage. Nothing but her own wit to raise her. She still hasn’t given enough?

I’m hollow and unmoored. Adrift in the storm front of my adulthood. Woefully unprepared for the journey.

How could this be something I deserved?

[toggerton]

This is a joke, right?

A dream, soured by my worst fears come to life?

Time must pass slower in this type of sleep, it almost feels real. There’s no way this is actually still happening.

Right?

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It has only ever been women.

Women who assume that my own father is my husband.

*He must be rich*

*Good for her!*

*Divorced and married the secretary!*

Is that what we expect now? The default?

My own mother, absent from most of life by choice. Physically present, mentally reliving, idolizing, and desperately clinging to her past.

*She must be crazy*

*That’s genetic you know*

How do you explain generational wounds to those that caused them? Share the load? Potentially hurt more? Bear it alone?

A mother wound is not so easily sown. Such injuries only heal with generations.

Thing is, those that hurt, are much more likely to hurt others. Repeating their cycle.

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Why am I here, destined to carry the weight of these mourning doves through my harshest years of torment?

A low humming call, once a comfort, now simply a reminder of the constant fight or flight I’ve been in for years.

Is it not enough to fight with your own mind? Have I not done a good enough job convincing everyone that I’m okay? Spiraling is an easy rabbit hole these days.

Hung by their brilliant orange feet, I will string my doves up, one by one. I imagine they’re dead, heads bobbling limply at my hip as I collect far past my limit.

One for my grandmother, who I never said goodbye to.

A second for my mother, who often has me carry her own doves.

Each feathered body weighing more than the pit in my stomach, entirely holding me in place at times as I adjust to each addition to my string of orange feet and dangling heads.

One for my broken heart. What more can it take?

Someone should stop me. (Help me?) A warden to take some of my burden and release me to return home.

But what is home without the doves?

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It’s a wonder why I ever thought my spurs would fit.

Raised in this urban prison too many call home. Each attempt to scatter myself to those cool rural winds ends in dirt on my name as I return home. Tail between my legs.

Is it wrong to long for things your bloodline has unlearned over generations? Separated from the earth herself over years of industrialization that wove its way between people and their wild spaces.

I want nothing more than a sky big enough for my dreams and all of the stars in the galaxy to hang above me at night.

I should have known it was all too perfect to last. Born a wildflower in a concrete desert. I am destined to ache for a life of watching the morning fog roll in over the river, distant calves bawling for breakfast.

Cursed to be uprooted for my resiliency, potted and labeled. Easier for consumption by the masses, marketed as hard to kill, takes neglect, and hardy.

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You can keep your sticker seeds

I’ll clean my car.

Purge the history of you in my spaces.

Maybe then, I won’t feel such presence of you

After you’re gone.

That’s what survivors do after storms

Pick up the pieces

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It’s time to dawn

My armor once again

Layers chafe against this new wound

Bare to none but those you trust

Hurt by nobody but those you love

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She said my eyes were pretty

Which eyes am I wearing today?

Are they my mother’s

Pale green with a lifetime of envy behind them

Maybe my father’s

Steel blue walls of duty to hide behind

Is it worse if they’re my own?

Layered with meaning and burden, brimming with tears?

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My mother has her mother’s mark, as does her sister.

As a child I had been clear: the mark would end with me. I would have mine removed.

I did not understand the weary sadness in my mother’s eyes when I told her this.

We thought I never grew into one. I’d missed the genes. But I knew it was there all along, in plain sight and pale to blend with my father’s nose.

My mother never did understand the profound sadness in my eyes when she mistook my mark for acne. Harsh pinching would never remove it from my skin.

Almost as if she too wished that I wasn’t hers.

Why then, did she have hers removed?