Empath's Prayer

when you can, heal
when you can’t, rest

when you’re lost, seek grounded earth,

touch velvet, smell citrus, taste the salt

of your tears for you are an ocean, you 

are more than your parts and none of 

yourself simultaneously. 

you are the colors of the shallows, and

the stillness of the depths, you are life

affirming and overwhelming, both a

siren’s call and solace.

to hold this in your palms,

demands a strength few will understand, 

many will fear, and even more will seek

out to quench their own insatiable thirst.

it is both burden and gift,

you who can choose to drown or sustain

the world of emotions around you, who

can host entire quiet worlds or crash onto

the earth and demand attention in silence. 

when you can’t, rest

when you can, heal

Heavenly (Refrain)

i searched for you and

found damp, rich earth and thought i

might root for a while

-----

sometimes it’s a whisper,

it’s whiskers, it’s so faint

everything briefly pauses

becomes irrelevant,

unimportant, uninteresting, 

I hold my

breath

so as not to disrupt, so

as not to startle, so as

not to break whatever 

spell I had not known

sometimes it’s a howl, 

it’s red eyes and distance 

it’s patience and knowing

no one ever stands still 

I catch my

breath 

so as to prepare, so

as to hold steady, so as

to cast whatever, any

spell I witnessed 

sometimes it’s a story,

it’s the knowledge of 

before, the hope of next

I release my

breath 

remembering how and

why I want to believe in

spells and magic and 

you.

What Color Do You Feel Right Now?

I feel like a bruise

mmm, like a fresh red one? or a deep yellow purple one?

deep blues and purples, 

beautiful, sore to the touch 

a memory of prior pain, an

invitation for future healing

aware of that which led us 

to here, to now, is likely not

a salve, salvation, safety

stretching your arm out from halfway to nowhere, an inhale that wasn't yours when it started, learning from the next generation's memories

we'll become our childhood's wildest dreams, 

and our elder's favorite stories, but

for now, I just want this moment, with you.

Heavenly

like a whisper, 
I'll show you the world
beneath the world when your
memory of it feels cold to the touch.

I Once...

I once thought that romance was reserved for 

cis het monogamous intimate relationships.

I once confused love as being finite and fickle

and all together intangible and inaccessible. 

I once, child, I once even confused love with

harm. 

thank god I know differently now, 

know that caresses and accountability and

friendship and consent and shared giggles and 

held hands, amongst friends and lovers and

strangers and the like, 

is romance, is love, is once I learned it was 

infinite, it was galaxies, it was the universe, it

was ever expanding

I became star dust, once again.

I Believe That We Will Win / In Anger and In Hope

be braver than you 
think you are until
you find your courage

let the anger fuel

your momentum and 

gift hope the space

in your bones.

Back Line

I want to apologize for

being broken, for 

breaking, for

how I can't tell you

what's wrong because

I know and I don't know

and the heaviness of

that knowledge is not 

for sharing, it's toxic.

It's toxic, like the way

life destroys everything

in its path, like did you

know we're all just 

slowly dying? Because

I do, and I did, and 

sometimes the pace

turns into a drumbeat

march step and I'm 

walking with my bike

but they can't keep up

and they fall farther

and farther

and farther

and farther 

behind and it kills me,

before destroying them, 

before lifting my burden

of knowledge, and weight.

Ignorance

Sometimes, sometimes,

I daydream about not 

being awake at all.