To Who I Am Becoming...

She often sat on this bench. The wood was old, the paint faded, but it fit here. In this park it was one of the oldest things here but somehow it had survived three high school keg parties, two mayoral renovation campanes, and countless couples breaking up and making up. It had stayed. She liked to sit here were you could only just barley make out the houses from the trees because of how they seemed to have grown together. She liked the open feild which despite the space never seemed to have a lot of sporting events or large gatherings on it. And the trees. She liked the trees because they looked like the bench. They were like old friends who have taken on the likeness of the other and so you can never picture them not existing together. Today was the kind of day She liked most of all. The grass was still green despite the fact that the temperature had started its decent. There were people around but they were sparse and unique like the candy you find when cleaning a child's room...

They say that the darkness lies. I don't think that is true. We lie to ourselves. We lie to others. In the darkness there is nothing but you and the lies you tell yourself. I have always liked the darkness because that is where I can decide what lies I need to get through, what I need to survive the party I need to go to, the class I will sit through, the conversations that are of things I have no interest in. In the darkness I decide what I will tell myself to get through. Perhaps they are not lies, just stories. Stories that may be true, already lived, told, past. Stories that are not yet true but have the possibility of becoming true because I am telling them. Stories that will never be true, they are not part of a life that I will ever live but make me happy that they exists. Kneeling by my bed at night, I tell myself these stories. Tonight I imagine a life I do not yet live. The point is not that I sit in darkness lamenting a life I wish I had but to see, with a perfect clar...

Words choke my breath strangling the crying child within my breast. The cacophonous sounds of ideas cut my skin with flesh and barbs. In vibrant colors I hide in florescent shadows away from sound and breath. The giver of adopted life has robbed with caring fingers that which she first gave freely. My smiling war-cry dispatched. Why? and how could you; you take what was not yours? Your celestial chimes declare my strength my ringing brilliance. Your singing praise strangles the growing life struggling to be corporeal. My words are missiles zooming, seeking their target. I see you, they see me. I have given myself the currency for peace to co-exist in illusion. Incarceration by my own hammer I have placed you as the warden not seeing the portal to voice and grace. I wait in quicksand sinking then rising holding my freedom. My voice restored, the bankers refund my currency for peace. I am triumphant Silently, silent no more victoriously a...

The snow and the cold licked her skin trying to make everyone go faster, go inside, get moving in cars. The cold and the snow tried to reach past her skin but she was immune. Her family was leaving. For four days they had shared her life. They had slept in her rooms, watch movies on her TV, met her friends, laughed with her, ate with her, and always there were stories being told and being made. For Four days her whole world was incredible. Her world was still incredible, but now it was a little quieter. She stood in the harsh light, making visible the painful events. She stood in the cold that was trying to take away her warmth and watched her family pile into their car and drive away. There was sadness, yes, but not now. That would come later when the silence of her home deafened her. It would come when she would think of a joke and would realize that no one was there to laugh at it. It would come when she tried to decide what to eat and no one was there to make a wild and spontan...

Every week I sit in church and think about my life. I think about what I want to do differently. How I have fallen short. Those who might help me be better. Those who I could help be better. And the ways that I can see more wonder in the world around me. Every week I make these lists in an attempt to focus me and remind me of things that I have forgotten when life has gotten jammed with other things that are less important. I have spent the last two weeks practically alone, however. I have not "gone" to church as it was General Conference for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which I watched in my home wearing my PJ's. I have not made my usual lists of goals and improvements. Today I decided to do something that I have not done in a very long time. Instead of making lots of lists of things to do I choose one thing. Today I was not going to watch TV and see where my day took me. Instead of getting lost in some show I Cleaned my kitchen Tided up my bath...

In the past I have written stories that were about me but where the main character was "She". Writing about She allowed me some distance so that I could talk about it. I have written this new piece about me without "She". The dry air prickles my skin with tickling fingers. My hands caress the desert grass feeling the hidden life that flows up through the earth with all of the stories, histories, and people that have been there before me, that I am now a part of. My eyes are closed but I don’t need them to see the blue sky with sparse clouds that are white but also carry the color of the land. The air carries the voices of those who found this land and became part of it. My blood flows like the red rock with the rhythms of the people and animals that have passed. This is where I am from. These are my people. Many may say that I have no right to say this, as they have. Calling me outsider, pretender, and unbelonging. They have scoffed at me. T...