I know the way you can get
When you have not had a drink of Love:

Your face hardens,
Your sweet muscles cramp.
Children become concerned
About a strange look that appears in your eyes
Which even begins to worry your own mirror
And nose.

Squirrels and birds sense your sadness
And call an important conference in a tall tree.
They decide which secret code to chant
To help your mind and soul.

Even angels fear that brand of madness
That arrays itself against the world
And throws sharp stones and spears into
The innocent
And into one’s self.

O I know the way you can get
If you have not been drinking Love:

You might rip apart
Every sentence your friends and teachers say,
Looking for hidden clauses.

You might weigh every word on a scale
Like a dead fish.

You might pull out a ruler to measure
From every angle in your darkness
The beautiful dimensions of a heart you once
Trusted.

I know the way you can get
If you have not had a drink from Love’s
Hands.

That is why all the Great Ones speak of
The vital need
To keep remembering God,
So you will come to know and see Him
As being so Playful
And Wanting,
Just Wanting to help.

That is why Hafiz says:
Bring your cup near me.
For all I care about
Is quenching your thirst for freedom!

All a Sane man can ever care about
Is giving Love!”
― Hafez

i asked God this morning, when will i stop loving him…He said never.

i asked God this morning, when will this stop hurting….He said maybe never.

i have been so focused on change and growing. this morning i remembered that some things…love…never change. once love is imprinted onto your life, there is nothing that removes that stain.

i don’t fear loneliness. my honest, true fear is that i will be held captive by my emotions and end up indebted to someone who i cannot be in a relationship with and we fall terribly out of love. i fear any relationship i have turning into hate. i cannot risk relationships with irresponsible lovers. i cannot do it. there comes a point in all relationships (with women and men) that reveals a person’s purpose in your life. most of the time we ignore the red light blinking on the dashboards of our soul. most of the people we entertain shouldn’t be in our theaters forever. good times are only good while they are good. and every good time inevitably leads to the next bad one. i don’t know how to explain these feelings to everyone in my life. i love a lot of people. in a real way that i understand them for being amazing and stupid and concerned and aloof and all of the colors that they bring to my life. i want people to be themselves and will impart whatever resources i have be it my little bit of wisdom, my little bit of money or my time into seeing them create any type of success. but adversely i understand when it is time to depart. and it doesn’t mean that love isn’t there, or did not occur or isn’t real. and just because we don’t talk and i am stubborn and busy in my own head, which is a real task and not me being standoffish…none of that means that my thoughts aren’t on you and i don’t send love your way and have concern for your well being. it might mean that you are just a dandelion seed floating through my atmosphere. i might be allergic to you, even if i enjoy your presence…i might catch you in my hands until you melt like cotton candy. you might land in my hair unnoticed. i may blow on you until you bloom and float away. or you may be on your way to implanting in someone else.

but i will not bear the emotional burden of having to be a painting in anyone’s life. i do not have a still life. not right now. my mind and body rejects the notion. i don’t know everything about love, but i don’t think that is what it is about. i can’t say i want or am looking for more stability at this point because i don’t believe it to be real, but not in a bad way. i believe that even those who are a fixture in my life still have the freedom to ebb and flow as they please.

an ex boyfriend told me that everyone has a different definition of love, and i never truly thought about that until i became of my own definition. this is not something i feel…it is a fact that i just recently came aware of in my life. i don’t even know if i agree with it…but i recognize its presence in my life over and over again. trying to hold on to things that are slippery, trying to mold something that is not pliable, this aint living honey…

‘Everyone
In the ballroom tonight
Will be my special
Guest…’

How would you then treat them
When you
Arrived?

Indeed, indeed!

And I know
There is no one in this world

Who
Is not upon
His Jeweled Dance
Floor

By Hafiz

It is half day and half night. Depending on the direction you are traveling, you are either chasing the rising of the sun or grasping the darkness and the moon. You can either go after the new horizon or hold on to what was, even if it was just seconds prior.

I don’t know what God is preparing me for. My sleep pattern has totally changed. The amount of sleep I previously required has been drastically shortened. I don’t tire easily. My body is changing. My mind is changing. Instead of focusing on the end result, I am focused on the changing. I don’t know where this change is leading, but I believe that it is leading somewhere.

I am at a point where I can choose between what was, even though it was and still is beautiful,  it is dark and mysterious. I can choose it, though it won’t be around much longer. I can reach for the stars, but the day is coming. Whether I am ready for it or not, it is coming. And I don’t want to be gazing at the moon when the sun comes, no. I want to be ready for whatever the day brings me. I don’t know what it is, but I know it will be light. I know it will be clear and I will be there to experience it.

This is special time of day that I have experienced for the first time in a long time, where the moon and the sunrise are simultaneous. It is a beginning and an ending all at once. It is the birth and death and both are stunning. The sky in between both occurrences dances with color. The world is busy with change and we are here to experience it whether we choose to participate or not is up to us. Whether we choose to do something different with these moments, this right now is our choice. But change is happening. God is telling us with every move and every sign in nature that change is the only constant.

I work today to be pliable not just with my body, but in my mind, my actions and my spirit. I am open to the ruggedness and the sweetness of movement and the fluidity of life.

When I wake up in the morning, I decide to cry. I decide not to eat breakfast. I decide to research and make phone calls. I decide to work out. I decide to eat good food and not junk. I decide my body looks amazing. I spend a lot of time in the mirrors trying to find myself, physically and emotionally. I cry a lot. I think need to. Sometimes I think something is wrong with me. Sometimes I think I am watering the dirt until the flowers grow.

I have a routine, but then again my life is a free for all. And I’m OK with that. I am living in the freedom I always wanted. I am working toward the goals I always dreamed.

So I then must ask myself, why does this feel so sad? How can someone have everything she wants and still feel empty? There are times when I miss my own voice, my own laugh. I still don’t have real smiles. I feel more like me than I did last month, but there is still more me to find. Finding Donna is like pulling a scarf out of a clown’s pocket. Who knows when the gag ends.

I am grateful for now. I am fully aware of everything that I have been blessed with. Yet I am fully aware that something’s missing. Awareness is better than false security, fogs and half truths. Late nights pacing the floors of truth is better than sleeping in a bed of lies. Resting now would be an unwanted luxury.

“You just want me to stop what I am doing and focus everything on you,” he said. “Yes I do,” I responded.

“You won’t give me what I want, but I know you can,” he told me.

“I can give you what you need,” I said.

“You won’t let me do what I need to do to make you beautiful,” he said.

“I’ll probably fight you the whole way,” I said. “But don’t ever stop fighting.”

“You are selfish,” he said.

“I know,” I agreed.

When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person’s body or emotions as a scratching post for yor own unfulfilled yearnings.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

The way women use the word bitch, black people use the word nigga and gays use the word fag…I want to reclaim the word lonely….

Have you ever had a couch on the wall in your room? And one day you decide to move that couch out of your house and there is an indentation in your carpet. And your wall looks bare. And your room feels strange. For months people come to your house and ask you, “what happen to your couch, your house looks so different.” Until every person who has ever been to your house sees your room without that couch, you have to tell this story over and over again why it is no longer there. Some people come over everyday and tell you how weird your house looks without that couch. They suggest to you that maybe you should get another couch, a better couch to fill that wall. Or, they remind you how stupid you were to get rid of that couch that looked so perfect in that spot.

Maybe you remember what that wall and that carpet looked like before you ever had that couch. Maybe that couch became so ingrained in your definition of that room that yes, it is notably and deliberately uncomfortable. Maybe there was nothing wrong with the couch aside from the fact that you just did not want it any more. Perhaps you were hasty in getting rid of a worn yet usable piece of furniture; your friends have no where to sit, you must admit that the house does feel strange without it and nothing else looks or feel right in that place.

Until one day, its absence is no longer strange. And one day after that its absence is irrelevant to the make up of the room.

Because there are some people who can never see you past what you used to be. There are some people who, by habit, will constantly remind you of what you had and never consider the possibilities of the blank spaces in you life. Some will always see holes, indentations and strangeness. They will never seek to know you outside of the person you were when they met you.

Why things change becomes irrelevant at the point of loneliness. And many people view loneliness as the absence of something. But maybe it is the most beautiful relationship of all. There might be tears and imperfections. There might be stains, mistakes and you might be here with or without consent. But you might fall in love with yourself. You might fall in love with God. You might feel so much like yourself that all the holes that are there don’t even feel like they exist anymore.

What if you said fuck that couch and you decided to paint the mural of your heart on that empty wall.

“Let It Flow”

First thing early Monday morning
I’m gonna pick my tears away
Got no cause to look back
I’m lookin’ for me a better day
You see the thing ’bout love
Is that it’s not enough
If the only thing it brings you is pain
There comes a time when we could all make a change

Just let go
And let it flow, let it flow, let it flow
Everything’s gonna work out right,
Ya know
Let go, and let it flow, let it flow, let it flow
Just let go

Don’t nobody want no broken heart
And don’t nobody want no two time losers
Ain’t nobody gonna love you like you are
If you take whatever he brings your way
You see the thing of it
Is we deserve respect
But we can’t demand respect without change
There comes a time when we must go our own way

Just let go
And let it glow, let it flow, let it flow
Everything’s gonna work out right,
Y’know
Let go,a nd let it flow, let it flow, let it flow
Just let go

Sometimes love it can work out right
Sometimes you’ll never know
But if it brings only pain in your life
Don’t be afraid to let it go