Little Things On the Way to Healing

Slow and silent mornings.
Legs spread wide and warm
to all 4 ends of a bed that is mine.
Called to rise and go higher.
The smoke in my mouth reaches and clears
the cloudiness inside.
Whisper a prayer or a meditation,
looking for guidance.
Say an intention or an affirmation,
looking for power.
At the mirror,
I catch a glimpse of the body that’s been
whipped in the whirlwind that is change,
spilling violently in (the preparation of) grief.
I breathe for the first time in almost 5 days.
I remind myself that there is space
for me and my release.
I recall a portion of gratitude that is enough,
carrying me towards distraction.

My mind is finally allowed to hold onto something
besides sadness.
Highs sweep away
the build up of an orchestrated distance.
Dust has settled
like a protective cover over the room.
My scattered green leaves are made heavy
from the weight of foreign particles.
Burning wood clears
the spirits that have settled into the empty spaces.
I piddle around,
rearranging the room
to make space for the baggage I’ve brought home.
I busy my hands,
washing walls and sweeping baseboards,
filling the air with a doctored disinfectant mist.
I pull a black unlabeled incense cone from a secret place,
lighting and delighting in the plumes
that rise towards the center of the room.

Again the gal in the mirror calls to me,
asking for company in her lonely misery.
“Where have you been?”
“How can you go so long without me!?”
Soothed by the voyeuristic camera angles
that capture the right tincture of shadow and light.
Snapshots that keep a vibrancy in a delicate stillness,
remaining quiet enough to stay tucked within the frame.
Hidden away out of fear
that tender wings might be broken or burnt,
by a world that has always refused to see.
Invisibility suits and mangles me.
These wings and novel limbs
refuse to go unheard and call to embodiment.
We settled (back) together,
becoming one.
The transition is tiresome,
being full in this body is work.
I find my way back into warmth,
letting the naked body stay free of its adornments.
I smoke a little more to smooth the chaos of this blending.
I slip into the darkness with them,
allowing the fullness to wash me into a neat sleep.

At the next awakening,
I am late to an engagement
I should not have agreed to.
Intuition tells me it’s too rare to miss this shooting star.
Pragmatism scolding that this is the only day
you can afford before you’re due back at the place
that holds humanity hostage for pay.
Many missed messages snap us into forward play,
rolling without hurried toward the outside.
Now is the time for the adornments:
color and kajal, gold and green.
I warm my skin in oil and music,
lighting more incense to stoke enough fire
to carry me into the outside world.
I piddle, looking for excuses to not return just yet.
I linger at the mirror to see them just under my skin,
hidden only by a thin smile that begs
for something beyond these curated walls.

Spilling out into a day without sun,
the outside greets me warmly.
Friendly faces emerge from familiar paths.
The street responds to the power,
activated once the threshold is crossed.
The train meets us
we descend into the underground.
No one tells me to smile.
No one says I don’t belong.
There are no should’s in this town.
As I resurface,
the certainty of wondering in the wrong direction returns.
I remember what freedom from expectation feels like.
I imagine what it will feel like to return to a lost self.
I sink into the envelope of anonymity,
not quite invisible but unshackled and unhindered.

Uncharted, eventually finding my way
to the ghost hiding in a diamond district,
Made flesh by a flight from Medellin.
We share familiar familial glances and quips.
Pride in one another overflows
from the new buds we nurture in one another.
Brought together by the potential of loss,
my role here is to prepare the ground.
A rare vulnerability that is
rubbed raw by the midtown buzz.
I am comforted by the view—
watching others being unfurled in the street.
I am sharpened by the chaos of
strangers blocking the way and
scammers selling their heirs.
I am lost and found, and lost again.

The brisk walk of someone who knows.
Embodied and bound
with an entity that proudly proclaims
a place in whichever realm
the most earnest intentions have been set.
Expertly rangling in the chaos
into a mounted beast that carries me back
to the space where this may have begun.
Into the silent sanctuary,
with air peppered with sorrow and grief.
I sway sorting lullabies from spells,
crooning softly in the waning moonlight.
I collapse into 96 pieces
of me and all the others I carry inside.
I heal with a million little things
on the path from now til then.