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[writingbykali]

It’s incomprehensible for me to consider that there was, even for a short while, a time we lived on this Earth together.

God Damn It, Dad.

I would do anything to sit next to you now. I want to know you so terribly it hurts- it’s unbearable.

But, I don’t want to know who you ‘were’.

I want to know you by osmosis of being near you.

I want to know you like I know my city’s streets.

Like I know the words to that song.

I ache an empty, fearsome ache for the ship long since sailed away, my heart loyal aboard. It’s intricacies and engravements lost to time, and it’s secrets to the sea. What was once my ship, destined for me, reduced to half made memory.

[writingbykali]

“This sadness is a sort of poetry to me… We watch as our garden dies. Our struggles with the soil, our triumphs in growth- it feels all for nothing! It is all decaying now. And we lay down together too, our hands in union, and we disintegrate into the Earth. Part of us dies here too, with all the things that could have been, and will not be. Then, there is nothing. Yet, the days continue to turn, even whole seasons still pass, and soon enough, new growth forms. Grass springs up, wildflowers appear, new paths emerge, and what was once a meticulous garden, pruned and proper, and then a graveyard, perished and cold, becomes a meadow, where all things are free. One day, in another life, you come to this meadow. You look out and see buttercups, and daisies, and sweetpeas for as far as the eye can see. The grasses speckle with their petals. Light pours onto you in the open air and, you smile. All you can see is beauty. The meadow has enriched you. And you, continue on, without the slightest clue.”

— Kali Ellis

[writingbykali]

I dream of helping people... truly helping. I dream of desperate and hopeless eyes easing. Of tension held in tired bodies dissolving, and pain piercing battered hearts relieved. I dream of cold, cast out bodies, held and hugged back to warmth. Of dirty hands and sore feet cupped under a cool sparkling spring. I dream of the violent, and the terrible, being moved to consciousness, compassion; changing. I dream of wickedness conceding to goodness, as corruption to justice.

I believe this is the only dream truly worth living for, and for a time of obscene naivety I believed this was what we all dreamed about.

However devastatingly I now know that it’s not.

…..

[writingbykali]

There’s a smell in the air... A smell that is sweeter, and brighter, and lighter than I smelled before.

A smell that slaps my senses awake.

This smell transports me to another time- to a treasured time, before I grew up and hardened.

This smell... it softens me.. and it says to me..

“Welcome home.”

[writingbykali]

Tragedy and Heartbreak,

Grief and Loss

Live amongst us.

Many of us avoid them like plague,

We avoid them at all costs.

We push them into the cold shadows to rot.

But these creatures have gained my friendship.

Indeed, they have taught me much.

I will tell the world their stories,

And I hope one day,

That these creatures will be loved.

[writingbykali]

Free yourself from the control of others. Do not kneel to who they want you to be.

Know in your heart you are Always Worthy of being here, being seen, and being exactly who you are. There are countless people who want and need the real you to show up, including your sacred spirit. Resist the shame, it is not yours. It comes from those who Judge. Release it with love. Keep your arms wide for them, for they are loved and accepted here too, and the door is always open to them.

They are welcome here, to the place of radical acceptance and deep respect. I choose to remain here, for everything is beautiful, and my heart is light.

I will not leave this place, to sit with them in the hurting world of judgements. I will not even wonder what I look like from where they sit. I remember when I once sat there, and everything looked ugly, but it was not the truth.

But they are welcome to come here. And I will embrace them if ever they arrive.

[writingbykali]

Another Life

I don’t quite know where to put all this grief stored inside me.

I have to let it go.

It gnaws at me, and growls at me, and rings deafeningly in my ears.

This is my life, and I do accept it. But there was another one with so much promise, and I never got to see it.

It was ripped away beneath my feet, and I stumbled onto another path.

Oh, how do I go on when every step takes me further from the other life I still ache for?! The impossible, the imaginary life where my Dad walks in through the door, and I know him, and I can touch him. And like magic, everything is perfectly in order.

...

I will honour my losses.

I honour the small child who lost her father from this world, who knew grief before she knew her first friend.

I honour all the parts of me who had the courage to reach out their arms, and did not receive the love they deserve.

It has not been fair.

I honour my anger.

It is understandable to feel angry.

I honour my sadness.

It is understandable to feel sad.

It is understandable to feel like I missed out.

...

I’m sorry the start didn’t turn out how I wanted,

Yet despite this ill-beginning-

I will live,

And it will be beautiful.

And all of my blessings,

Are still coming.

[writingbykali]

Remembering Passion

Recently, I have been returning to a memory of me as a little girl, maybe 6 or 7 years old, sitting in my childhood backyard on a rickety old bench, with light-bleached wood which was chipping terribly, producing clusters of splinters at either end. My legs, not quite yet reaching the ground, swung like little branches in the wind, mindlessly and gently bobbing back and forth to an almost imperceptible rhythm. Around me, birds sung and rustled in the tree leaves, and on the ground amongst the bushes directly behind me. An even larger group chatted and swooned in the enormous tree, several metres ahead of me, past our tall blue corrugated iron fence, across the road, on the nature strip along the sidewalk.

In my left ear, I focussed on the buzzing sound of the bees who took feast on the lavender bush beside me. I took a mighty inhale, experimentally, wondering if I could smell the lavender. I could. I smiled, impressed with myself, without really knowing or investigating why.

In my right ear, I could hear the whooshing by of cars and the more violent grumble of heavier vehicles as they travelled the busy main road just outside the eastern-most side of the yard. In the same ear, distant conversations could be heard, and a delighted scream followed by laughter and loud, enthusiastic greetings between two women suddenly pierced the whole scene.

It was late afternoon- maybe 5 or 6 in the evening, and I still wore my blue and white checkered school dress. The day was warm, but the lowering of the sun behind the neighbours house to my left hand-side cast a great cool shadow across the yard. I was perfectly comfortable. I could hear faint sounds of staticky music from inside the house, maybe the radio, and I was comforted by the thought of my mum, just out of view, probably making us something for dinner.

I closed my eyes to focus on a feeling brewing from a deep place somewhere between my heart and my stomach. It felt tender like pain, but hopeful, like joy. Images of all kinds swirled around in my mind, and combinations of words paired themselves together like musical notes, around and around in my mind, like a carousel. I continued to probe this mass in the middle of me, with my mind, and I tried to decide whether it felt good or bad. I couldn’t decide.

‘Dinner!’, Mum calls.

I let my eyes stay closed for a moment before I opened them, I jumped off of the bench- while carefully avoiding splinters- and walked routinely in through the backdoor, past the laundry into the living area, and the memory bleeds out.

I have returned to this memory many times in my life, without really ever knowing why, except that it is a memory where I was comfortable, where I was inexplicably happy. Evermore, I recall this memory. And what becomes more clear as time passes is what that feeling inside of me, which I became aware of that day, actually is.

I realise now that the sensation that I was becoming aware of was my passion. Deep, burning passion that has always blazed within me. A bright red passion for life, electric and charged, buried within the fleshy mass of my body. Big. Loud. Painstaking. Passion. It is not only a feeling, but a large part of who I am, I am starting to realise.

As I recall that memory now, of me sitting on a bench in my childhood backyard, I see a young girl who was starting to discover how she felt inside. Who was confused by what she came across, and all the more intrigued. I am her, and she is me. A lot of the time, my spirit is still sitting on that bench in my childhood backyard, smelling lavender and trying to decide if being me feels good or bad. At least I know now it’s a question that can’t simply be answered.