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[writingforthegirasoles]

Geography

My head and heart are clear

Clear as the Pennsylvania well-water,

Clear as the Oregon night sky.

No longer is it swimming in blistering heat

Heat like Columbia summertime,

Heat like Red Rock Canyon.

Instead I feel like I’ve landed in my body

Warm as freshly-tilled New Orleans earth,

Warm as my Asheville bed with you in it.

[writingforthegirasoles]

The soft golden sunlight peers through the clouds

Shining on my barely waking face

Each day is the same: I am 

The cloud in the sky, and I am the sun,

Permeating the shadow of doubt

Warming the chill of anxiety

Photosynthesizing depression into growth.

In fact, I am every celestial body: every star, 

Every black hole. I am creation and destruction.

I am both depressed and content,

I am anxious and at peace. I am full of 

Doubt and full of courage

Because these things are not what they are

Without the other. It just so happens that 

Fear and love happen to look the same: 

It all depends on how the light shines.

[writingforthegirasoles]

Open your heart

Allow light to shine through

Into the window of your soul.

Feel how you sparkle,

How you illuminate the path

So that all who follow will not fall.

Open your heart

Breathe into your veins.

Allow the oxygen to permeate

The walls you unwittingly erected;

Trust that your will can make them crumble,

The remains fertilizing the very ground from which you'll grow.

[writingforthegirasoles]

Raise Your Voice

I wrote this monologue for my applied theatre class. It was in response to the call of Henry Giroux’s Border Crossings, Gloria Anzaluda’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, bell hooks’s Talking Back, and Paula Rothenberg’s The Construction, Deconstruction, and Reconstruction of Difference, among others. 

[Barely audible] Can you hear me? Hello? [Thumbs up, so as to ask the audience.] Okay? I would speak up a little louder, but I seem to have lost my voice. I am unsure of where it might have gone, but I have a suspicious feeling that it got lost somewhere between here and somewhere else: right on the border of then and now.

I feel fine, really. No need to send a Get Well card, though please know the thought counts for something. My throat doesn’t hurt; I haven’t been coughing; I tried gargling with salt water; I even drank this strange mixture of honey and some kind of spice with lemon, which I wouldn’t recommend to anyone who I thought of as a friend.

I didn’t lose it myself. Honest! I’m usually pretty careful with all of my stuff. Except for that one time I lost my key to my bike lock, but even then I found it after about half an hour of looking for it. It ended up being right next to my bike. I figured that if I looked hard enough for my voice, that I’d have found it by now.

I don’t know if someone took it, but all I know is that it’s been so long since I’ve known where it was that I hardly remember what it sounded like. I remember it being kind of low–though not quite as a low as a man’s–making my chest vibrate a little, and it would get higher in pitch if I got excited about something. Sometimes I would use it to sing or to laugh, making the music of my soul. I had a laugh like it came from the center of the earth, hearty and heavy but happy. I think I miss those more than I miss talking loudly.

But it seems like there’s something in the way of me finding it. I don’t even know where to begin looking for it. I can’t even call out to it like I would to a lost dog or something because, well, that’s the whole problem in the first place, now isn’t it?

[Full volume] Oh, you’re giving it back to me? Told you I didn’t lose it. Now, take a listen.

[writingforthegirasoles]

Show up for yourself

Every day

Honor who you are

Every day

Love yourself fully

Every day

Open mind and heart  

Every day

Hold space for others

Every day

Find a way to let go

Every day

Seek opportunities

Every day

[writingforthegirasoles]

Smoke, Fog, and Haze

The trails of burning Palo Santo cleanse me

Of all that I no longer need

But my soul’s light reflects off the smoke

Cobwebs of curiosity create clouds

Through which I cannot see

—My ancestors remind me to rely not on sight, but feeling

[writingforthegirasoles]

From Under the Magnolia

This poem was guided by my Mexican ancestors, and by the magnolia tree of my childhood home. Root in and make room for growth.

...

From under the magnolia’s dark green leaves,

I saw Her. For the first time I recognized a face

Of someone who wasn’t familiar; I was

Comforted by a stranger. She showed me

A vision that would one day become mine.

I was 5; She was ageless.

We danced and told secrets and

I walked along her roots

Until the street lights came on.

Then I’d be gone, only to return to her

Branches’ embrace, coming to know her divine face

Day after day. Like it was my own. She told me that I

Was a warrior; She told me that I

Would never be alone; that my own roots would always

Guide me home; that my mind contained

Knowledge that I didn’t yet know; that through me

Healing love and creation could flow, in and out.

I didn’t know what it meant, but I knew She meant well.

I didn’t see her for many years. Until:

After 17 rotations of the sun, after thinking

All I was was said and done, She returned to me

In a dream. I was

Down and out, seeping self-doubt.

I looked upon Her face but saw my own:

She said to me

     “Come in through the leaves. Sit at my roots.

      Look at me: look at my blooming flowers that will soon wither;

      Look at my deep, entangling roots, that have held on for many storms;

��     Look at my leaves, evergreen, but always growing.

      I am proof things remain but there is no way that

      You will stay the same. You will yield to change.

      To feel joy amid all the strange

      Is a feeling you cannot feign,

      A feeling foreign to your brain

      There is no way it will sustain. But, find peace

      Knowing that your soul’s moonlight won’t cease

      As the same light was never extinguished in

      All those who came before you:

      Your magic is ancient. Your roots are deeper than

      Any pain you may be feeling now. You carry within you

      A potent medicine, passed down to your in your life’s blood,

      From mothers, midwives, magicians, mighty warriors

      Who bore you, who birthed the essence of who you are,

      And are becoming yet.

      Like you, I, too, was once a sapling, just beginning to feel

      Our great mother’s earth, not yet knowing what it could offer.

      She ensured my growth was not stunted; that I was not lost in the forest.

      For every snap of a branch, there have been ten more that grew;

      For every season I went without, my blooms doubled the next.

      It is not in your mind’s eye now, but it will be:

      The day when you come to know Her as you know me,

      The day you fuse your old and current selves, to meet

      Who you will become:

      The past, present, and future selves as one

      Fluid transition to your newfound position

      Giving recognition to all parts: those without and within

      To strive, to seek, to dream

      May you never lose steam

      To achieve, to fight for what you believe

      To pursue all things with hope, all things

      With love, in service to below and above.

      Illuminating dark spaces, to seek familiar faces

      In unlikely places and cherish the embraces

      That you may never feel again.”

And She is gone. The coolness of the air, not Her branches,

Wraps around my shoulders

Much of what surrounds me serves only as a placeholder

For the connection that yields direction.

The signs and prayers could all just be deception

But is believing in something not better than despair?

It’s a game of Lotería, but it keeps matters fair

But magic and all is coming, with no shortage in sight

And I can change the course of fate if I will it.

Still, for now, the Fool’s fortune is greater than my own

What power can I possible conjure when I’m all alone?

I am left with only my intuition and sheer volition

That’s wearing thin, but I’ll search for more within

Even if nothing is revealed, even to examine my scope of field

It may yet yield all which is past and now healed.

I remember the pact we made when I was five,

But, oh, how much harder it is now to keep hope alive.

I’ll continue to dream

even when I’ve lost all steam,

even when the light narrows to a single beam.

I’ll continue to hope

even when the Universe says nope,

even when I’m seeing only a limited scope.

I’ll continue to pray

even if I don’t know if I’ll see another day,

even when the response is after much delay.

I’ll continue to dance

even if I’m not granted a deserved chance,

even if my moment’s magic fails to entrance.

I’ll continue to create

even if I share my art too late,

even if my efforts are met with hate.

Magnolia’s gaze reminds me of my earth’s view

This vantage point above it all

But keeping close to those I’ll care for

Nurturing with compassion and intuition,

Healing by soft light,

Providing others with gentle protection,

Remembering my ancestors’ loving lesson

Of rooting, and growing, from deeper within.

[writingforthegirasoles]

Magic and all is coming

The coolness of the air wraps around my shoulders

Much of what surrounds me serves only as placeholders

For the connection that I reckon gives direction

The totems and herbs could all just be deception

But is believing in something not better than despair?

It’s a Wheel of Fortune, but it keeps matters fair

It’s a Tower of hope that may most likely topple

It’s a Hanged Man who humbly surrendered amid debacle

It’s a Fool’s gold that is less precious than any jewel

It’s a Magician’s trick that uses only a simple tool

But magic and all is coming, with no shortage in sight

And I can change the course of fate if I will it with all my might

Still, for now, the Fool’s fortune is greater than my own

What power can I possible conjure when I’m all alone?

I am left with only my intuition and sheer volition

That’s wearing thin, but I’ll search for more within

Even if I don’t know where to begin - but I must do research,

Not be be besmirched, see all that I can see from my lowly perch

Even if nothing is revealed, even to examine my scope of field

It may yet yield all which is past and now healed.

[writingforthegirasoles]

New Collection: Yamas and Niyamas

As I am going further into my bilingual (Spanish) yoga teacher training, I have created a new collection of poems about the yamas and niyamas. The yamas and niyamas are yoga's ethical guidelines laid out in the first two limbs of Patanjali's eightfold path. 

During a restorative yoga meditation + free write, I expanded on each of the yamas and niyamas: each of them have been posted without editing, without judgment. You can read them all here. 

Many thanks and much love.

[writingforthegirasoles]

On expansion and contraction

Old clothes hang on my bones that 

Feel more mine than ever

Shedding dead weight so I 

Won’t be late for my cue to 

Walk through the door of opportunity

Excuse me as I strip my skin

Revealing what lies within 

Patience is not wearing thin: my

Body is shrinking but my soul is

Expanding past the confines of the

Physical frame I occupy in the meantime.

[writingforthegirasoles]

Submerged in my subconscious

Inundated by intuition

Flooded by feelings

Holding my breath in these depths of hope

Below the breaking waves, emboldened

Treading, then traversing 20,000 leagues under the tide

Looking up to the moon’s light with love

Wading towards the world within

Gradually giving in to the galaxy’s gravity

[writingforthegirasoles]

Dismantle your convictions

Break them beyond recognition

Into the smallest parts imaginable

For those fragments of atoms

Build us up.

[writingforthegirasoles]

Love and light

Lay down your heavy head

On the soft cushion of love 

Safe from the hard reality

Let your load be light.

[writingforthegirasoles]

Affirmation

You are more than a number

More than a letter more than

You could ever imagine,

More than the sum of your parts

[writingforthegirasoles]

Heart stops; thoughts kick into overdrive A chill in my spine to remind me I’m alive Time stands still through tunneled vision Self-doubting interrogation halts all decision Count my lucky stars; can only get to eight Uncertainty’s dance keeps me up in a state “A diamond in the rough: I am enough” But it’s too late to call Anxiety’s bluff. . . . Late (better than never?) World Mental Health Day words. Anxiety has had its way with me these past couple years. While it was something that has been with me for as long as I remember, the dominoes finally fell. It has been quite the journey toward facing it head-on, healing, and health management. But I’m here. Even if just to remind you that you are valid, you are worthy, and you are loved.

[writingforthegirasoles]

I fix my tea before I dream

The herbs swirl in my subconscious

A ritual warm and full of steam

I wake knowing, “I want this.”

I read someone else’s words before I sleep

Losing myself to a story

A healthy escape that I’ll keep up

To bide off darkness and worry.

I wash my face before I slumber

Washing away the day

Tomorrow any anxiety I may encumber

Must in the future stay.

I pen my thoughts to the night’s sound

Striking the ink to the rhythm of my thoughts

Meanwhile fear and curiosity abound

I must momentarily quell my haves and have nots.

[writingforthegirasoles]

It’s okay

To think

Beyond 

What seems possible

The intangible

Keeps us

Moving