Sleep is but a memory
It’s the tide that slips onto the shore,
Leaving dreams washed up on the beach
There are daisies on my mind, a wrinkled blanket 
Left in a field under the mid day sun
I went away so I could come back 
Didn’t want to but it was important that I did
Held the hand of a little girl, snapshot
In my mind
Her strawberry blonde hair shining, tiny face
Smiling up at me as ice cream melts
I wake up crying, arms reaching out…
She was never mine and I don’t want her
But my mind is trying to convince me I do

Wandered the aisles of Hannaford, looking
For shampoo and conditioner 
It made me smile because
It made me think of you
And that poem I wrote so many memories ago
And now my mind is stuck on you 
We’ve come so far together, 13 months 
Been through so much, with you next to me
The hours we’ve spent together, your arms around me 

The moonlight casts a lonesome silhouette
of where your body would bring the picture
to life in this humanly incomplete puzzle, 
pillows and blankets jaggedly shuffled and
stuffed into vacant cracks, and I dream that the chilled
shadow across my waist is your arm fondly
acknowledging the small of my body as the 
dark wanes with the bright side of the moon. 

Until you have come panting at my door like 
a drenched wayward dog desiring for more than a bone,
the moon will remain as my witching hour lover. 
Until you arrive back home with light shining 
in your every cell and become my beacon of warmth, 
my treasured fiery sun boy. Until I witness you rise
in the morning light, I will weep like a widow in the dawn
and be silent under my galactic twilight shawl.

I go outside
I fear the strangers
staring 
watching
judging
waiting
I stay inside
I fear my father
staring
watching
judging
waiting
It seems like it will never end
It seems like I am never safe
Maybe that's what they want
what they've wished for
and hoped for
and prayed for
For me to be scared
For me to be terrified to live
For me to stop existing in their perfect world
Their perfect
stereotypical
heteronormative
male
world
that makes me feel so out of place
my insides feel like they're burning

Every time I think about leaving I wonder
Who would want me?
Who would truly want me?
and then I realize
I'm selfish for thinking I'm the only one
The only one who is suffering 
The only one living with the burden of who I am

That's why they call it a community

So we can all suffer together

For fifty years through thought and wit
We have made our own decisions
Our bodies are ours, as we've known all along
We can't let them be up to the politicians

Black-robed judges and justices
Claim to have overturned Roe v. Wade
But their choices can't silence our voices
We'll never stop speaking up, unafraid

Some women who are younger or even older
Simply aren't ready to be mothers
And some who've been raped never had a choice
We can't leave their fate up to others

We mustn't succumb to the politician's will
Even if our rights to choice don't matter in their eyes
Instead we'll learn and unite and educate and change
For even through this hardship, we will rise

For fifty years, people not unlike myself have been protected.
Fifty years; over thirty less than the average woman's lifespan.
This means that the average woman has not yet been able to live her entire life with control over her body.
Now, I won't be able to do that either.
My control over my own body has been taken from me.
Every woman in this country's control over her body is at stake due to the decision of five people.
They say that we must protect the lives of unborn humans,
but why should we do that when it puts the matured, active lives of their mothers at stake?
The decision to continue forward with a pregnancy should be between a woman and her doctor.
Why have we let majorly male politicians take that from us? What more could they know about the burden of birthing and raising a child?
They say it's religion, but it is in a way I'll never understand. 

When my son asks for a bb gun for squirrels, I will hand him wildflower seeds and tell him that he will take care of the next baby bird
That crashes into our window
When that baby bird dies, because baby birds always do, I will kiss him and we will bury the body in an ornate carved wooden box
And he will never want for a bb gun again
I will never let him cry without an embrace or climb a ladder without support and when he hits people I will cry
Because maybe I should have let him fall or hoisted him higher but a mother always cries
And so I will pull myself together and spray my son with the bottle used for our plants and have him apologize and play
The first time he uses "girl" as an insult and not a descriptor or a title of highest praise we will sit down and I will look him in the eye
And tell him that I am a girl
That I was a girl and will always be a girl and that girl is just a name for what some people are

Symphony of colors
Melody of hills
Harmony of growth
Ballad of truth
Rhythm of quakes
Tunes of emotions
Beats of light
Chorales of love

Keys weave stitches with
A gentle touch whispering
To the pain not that
It's OK but that perhaps
It's not OK and that's
OK
In a way nothing else can
Music heals

Eyes slide closed
Letting rhythms weave us back
Together

To Do

• Write a letter to grandma
• Tell her of how I have grown
• Of all the ups and downs
• That come with being fifteen
• Tell her about missing my friends
• How we used to pretend to be mermaids
• Remind her that she is my favorite 
• And that I miss her more then the world
• Make sure to add a heart at the end
• Right before my name