To Who I Am Becoming...

She had failed. There was no other way to say it. Despite all of her accomplishments, all of the honours that people attributed to her, she had failed at the things that mattered most, and no amount of humour, self-deprecating or not, could change that fact. For years she'd hid behind her staged smile and her enticing humour. She had worked hard at the tasks that had clear beginnings and endings and could be accomplished by mortals. She dreamed of being more, of doing more, of meaning more. Yet, when opportunities presented themselves, she failed to live up to the possibilities. People. That was the part of life that she had failed. She had failed to truly care about or for people. Caring led to pain. Caring meant investing in another person, only to have that person reject all that had been invested into them. It was easier not to care, to create a safe distance so as not to get hurt. It was easy for Her to do. Like a switch that she could flick on and off, she could care or n...

She sat at her desk. It had been a nice walk from her home to the place that often felt more like home than where she lay her head at night. It had been a long while since she had picked up her pen to write anything but something compelled her to write today. Perhaps it was the rain that seemed to wash away all of the refuse that muddled the world. With the cleansing rain went her indecision and ambiguity. She was remembering how she had come to this place, this desk, this life. Somehow she had forgotten how she had come to be over the years. Those memories had been buried under "To Do" lists and obligations and her own desires to please others. Who knows when it became more important for her to honour other's stories for her than herself but it had. In the quiet moments, on walks or the silent melodies of rain falling, she longed to run to trees and earth and write her connection with the world as she had done in the past. Today would not be the day to drive out of the...

I don't know how long I have laid here. Time is not counted the way it is in other places, it is counted in  sunrises and sunsets, drops of rain, cloud formations, lady bug steps, and a thousand other ways that are barely noticeable. I once stood tall like the others, reaching to the sky and providing shelter to others and strength to the earth. It has been a long time since I have fallen. I used to be upset about it, feeling the texture softening on one side, being invisible to all those who look up. I had been upset, thinking that I would no longer be able to find my place in the world, a place that mattered to the whole order. I was upset until She came. I had never seen anyone here. I heard stories of people coming to places like mine, but not never this far out, this uninteresting of a place. But, here She was, walking as though she was always meant to come here. As she moved, she touched my friends with kind fingers, making her way to…me. I thought she would pass me by. S...

She couldn't always put a name to what she was feeling. Her life was good; happy. By many means of measurement, She had nothing to complain about. She had a good job that might matter to someone with good friends who made everything seem wonderful. She had good friends that were always there for her if she ever called; She didn't, often. She had wonderful family who showed her all of the different ways of being in the world and the joys that could be had. She had all that she needed to live a comfortable life with relative meaning. And yet … She could not help but think that it might not be enough. She looked out her window at the ever darkening sky with lights being lit for those who might be traveling  like a twinkle of possible lives and adventures that could be lived. She could look into softening light like a fortune teller who looks into her crystal ball. She heard the echoes of lives that She could have lived, the people she could have met, the people she could have be...

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...

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...

The human life is made up of experiences. Some we choose to have and some are chosen for us. We all have one choice no matter the experience we live, what to do when it is over. When it becomes part of our past instead of our present. When it fades into memory instead of reality. When it becomes a story told at parties instead of something to be dealt with in the moment. We choose what we become. We choose what we will remember, what we will tell. We choose. She stood in that moment of choice. The event had passed and the next one, the one where she would have to actively deal with it, had not started yet. This was it, when she would have to choose what would happen next. She barely understood it herself and could not imagine how she would be able to explain it to someone else. It was over, and she wasn’t sure she knew why. She knew the raw facts of how she had ended up here. She knew the chain of events that had led to this. She knew the reasoning that was given to explain w...

She stood at the brink. She had heard this been used as a metaphor many times. “They are on the brink of destruction”, bringing this person to the brink, and so forth. She looked into the fathomless ravine. As She looked She saw faces emerge, She saw her mother, her father, her brother, the children who had become hers, the loved ones who needed her in their lives and all those who knew her through and through. She didn’t just see the faces but heard the voices; the laughter, the cries and the songs of these loved ones. With each face, each sound, and each memory the pain grew. She remembered the food that She and her mother shared on car trips, the conversations had. She remembered the feeling of the land felt through tires on road trips, songs sung with no care of tone, pitch, melody, or lyrics with her dad. She remembered the feel of shotguns and the sound of clay pigeons shattering shooting with her brother. She remembered the feeling of grass rolled in and the smell of rain ...

She realized why she liked this space. She sat in her office at the university; filled with the memories of triumphs past, small achievements, stacks of work to be done that told her that she was important to someone, and trinkets of loved ones who remembered her as a better person than perhaps she was. It was in this space that she liked to work and play pretend as if she were what and who all of these people and objects thought she was. Here she could imagine herself in a life that was more than the harsh reality she lived. Here she could be amazing. She noticed that the lights were off. She never turned on the lights because she didn't want to have the light reveal the lies that kept her going from moment to moment. It was always the light that reminded her that she was not who she thought she was, it reminded her of her failures and the things she had forgotten or neglected to do, and it forced her to see that the magic that she believed in was just delusion. These things cou...

Power. Connection. Rules. Identity. For me, being a redhead meant that I was given something extra. I was different from others and therefore I had to live differently. My father was a redhead but it was my mother (a dark haired) that taught me about being a redhead. I vaguely remember the books that we had in our house. The important ones had redheads as the main characters. They were the fun ones, the changers, the people in silent power, and even the secret or not so secret destroyers of lives. They were those with divinity or tantamount to daemons. Lots of times they were both. This was often the same in the real world as well. An Asian woman once asked my parents if they wouldn’t like to have my hair be a different color. “Like what?” was their question back, “Like black.” was her response. In her culture red hair meant something bad. Another time my mom and I were in downtown Tucson, at dusk, waiting for the bus. A man waiting with us looked at the sunset and ...