I want to leave I love you Bruises and Litter your body with Imprints of my heart I love you Is tattooed on my lips As I press them against your body Again and again and again My tongue clicks I love you In Morse Code Reverberating against your teeth Echoing into your mouth I love you Is imprinted on the inside of my cunt And your knuckles Emerge engraved With my declaration Your palm births Face up The beats of my heart Holding the melody of I love you I love you I love you she taught me how to spell her name
OP-UL-ENCE she said gimme that umph gimme that extra gimme your best best best but she’s the moon! she didn’t even have to ask (i texted her the night before gimme a tour from your heavenly skies show me what you see every night) she knew i was coming for her but even though we both knew it still took me all day to say i just really wanna lay in your bed take me to your room the moon is a queer brown femme with cloudless eyes & a mouth made up of willow trees & summer mornings & magic only femme of color covens can conjure & she fits perfectly in the nook beneath my wing & maybe you don’t know so i’m gonna tell you she made the best sounds when i nuzzled into her glitter dust nipples tell me what makes you full & new & she helped me with my necklace & showed me where to put my ring & i kept on til my arm grew new seasons of muscle & i found out the formula for stars is glitter + sweat let me tell you about Opulence how she can change you forever how apologies are not needed when she makes you come real loud & how she taught me new ways to take up space as i laid there naked as a spoon all belly & tits you spell her name O-P-U-L-E-N-C-E Opulence i gave her my umph i have her all of my extra i gave her my best best best "Fuck Off: My Internal Dialogue of Naming & Accountability" *CW: this piece is me processing some feelings of my sexual assault & mentions mental health stuff. please be gentle with yourself if this sharing has potential to triggers your hurts. xoxo 1. As some sort of ode to my present state of sexual assault related ptsd, I am sharing the following. Last night I actually got some sleep, but still found myself upright, in the middle of the night, dream-like thoughts floating in & out. I moisturized with coconut oil to calm the unrest in my skin, offered myself a chance to cry, but decided to try sleep again. The process took significantly less time than the night before, perhaps because I was so exhausted, but whatever the reason, I am still grateful for the sleep. I woke up alone, had capacity to draw some tarot cards, & did some reflecting on the following: burnout the star trauma & internalized oppression My plate, know as LIFE, is fuckin full all the fuckin time. I'm tired of it being full of bullshit, of recovering from traumatizing shit I have no control over, of tensions too high. Admittedly, though, I am in some kind of self-preservation flavored denial. Part of me is like, "What burnout? I'm fiiiiiine!" Blah. This was the entry point of my busy-working-both-jobs-today day. How do I take care before I feel like shutting the fuck down? 2. The star card--ancestors, magic, water, soft, intuition. I decided to address the impending // ever present exhaustion in my life, with these influences, & took time from colonial capitalistic powers to do my makeup in soft pinks, put together a look with my pajama dress & layers of sweaters, eat breakfast with my sister, & allowed myself to arrive at work when I felt ready, even though I was technically 15 minutes late. This feels important. Significant. One of the many things I'm not supposed to do. 3. Here is another thing I'm not supposed to do. Tell the truth. Name for myself what happened to me. Share what I want without shame or explanation. Time travel with me, back to the fall of 2013, when I was barely starting to grapple with what had happened to me the summer before. So many layers, so many things to tend to & details to carry. 4. summer of 2012 fuck off, sweet bee how do i write this? tell the truth of my experience? i am trying so hard to be aware of the impact of my words because i don’t want to fall into traps of reducing you to fucked up tropes of femmes. i do not want to clothe the shit that went down between us in bone-constricting misogyny and femmephobia. i also want to tell the truth, the fucking truth. where do i begin—when i fell in love? or when i fell out? out. out is more fresh. i won’t name you name you, but i’m keeping the sweet bee. it was a name i gave you when i was in love, and now it is a way for me to keep tabs. i can feel how far i’ve fallen out of love with you by the way my nickname for you mocks my tongue. fuck off, fuck off, fuck off, sweet bee. i can’t believe this shit you did to me. yeah, the shit you did to me. i can’t decide if the lies or manipulation or blatant disregard for my “no” hurts more. they are interconnected, propping each other, held tight in the teeth of one another. i fully acknowledge something fucked up and violent happened to you this summer, and that was definitely not your fault, but something happened that i never knew was coming. layer by layer, the trauma you were experiencing was peeling me vulnerable as i ran in circles and talked in circles and dreamed in circles to help you. you came into my life, thick with giving is what i though, but thick with something else is what i found. you came into my heart thick with want that suffocates and for a time you kept it from me but when he violated you you survived in a way that violated me my no was consumed by your desire and it was no longer about sex it was about taking what you wanted ghastly entitlement when i told you “no” you were supposed to listen “no” can enrich relationships “no” is valid without explanation “no” is what i said but i don’t know what the fuck you heard what i know is this: you pushed me up against the wall in my kitchen and stuck your mouth on mine after i told you i was too tender to touch you kiss you hug you fuck you i couldn’t do any of it and you your whatever grew to such a horrid degree that you crossed each of my boundaries again and again and again and i became more and more numb to survive your survival i lack a language that feels adequate to describe how your hands felt when they took from me it was no longer touch it was like they were cursed to hurt and suck without my permission you wailed and shook your head no you threatened this and that you lied to others and then you lied to me you were always lying it seems 5. I'm scared she might read this. I'm afraid that the flow is all wrong, that I'm not as eloquent as I wanna be, that I will regret this in a few hours, few days, few weeks. No matter, I'm writing this anyways. I'm desperate for sleep & peace of mind. I'm quickly becoming willing to tell the truth. 6.
My comfy grandma glam look for today. Multitasking brushing teeth & selfies. i had another post to put here, but mercury in retrograde ate it. so, a poem is gonna have to suffice while i lament all the time & words & energy i just lost.
i'm a healer had it confirmed by a lightning bolt bus driver when i was 19 after naming it for myself while reading a book that beckoned me from the shelves of the public library while i was trying to figure out who the fuck am i? i didn't know that healers could be addicts & survivors crazy & chronically ill queer & brown femme & soft broken & whole but here i am in all my glory addict & survivor crazy & chronically ill queer & brown femme & soft broken & whole & i am a healer i've had to sift through a lot of lies that were told to me about me. i've had to grieve, a lot, & learn how to trust my naming of things. i've learned how to time travel & decode my queer healer family tree. in the past 12 years, i have uncovered a blood // given family tree fecund with healers, birthworkers, witches, orators, & medicine people. i have also learned that colonial violence--through forced government & church run boarding school attendance, substance abuse, forced removal // displacement, emotional // physical // sexual abuse, homophobia, misogyny, to name a few--has caused us to forget who we are & where we come from. luckily, my feelings have never let me turn away, turn off for too long, & have saved me from staying dead on the inside. i have come back, for you, for us, for my ancestors & our descendants, so we can remember our brilliance, our softness, so we can remember how we used to love each other & come back home. it is my pleasure & honor to join the femme healers that came before me, that i come with now, & that will come after me. check out my work & offerings here, at White Shell Healing Services. & then we put on all the makeup
& cry it all off with salty at the world femme of color tears we are afraid to shed & so i write myself love letters sealing everything with lipstick kisses all the implied & explicit fuckery that seep through envelopes of my offering-hair & if for one second i thought i could swim & brave the cold i would jump in the river by my house & float downstream settling into somewhere else but for now songs about the moon on repeat will help me hold ceremony as i adorn myself with high pigment prayers imagine me with teeth & wings & reptile skin
brush against my feathered brow with your meat eating teeth & swim me through your single cell organism self nothing but blue & clear & how am i alive dream back to the busted summer we kissed like golden continents making extinct the world outside with those merciful claws & double back to me with those unforgiving hands when that bangin flood comes to claim your table #tbt to that (relation)ship that burst into orange & red flames & sunk to the bottom of the ocean & came back, covered in skeletons & seaweed, only to burst into blue & pink flames & sink again. be my sun, my moon, my end, my beginning
let me guide you back to the desert, cover you with the cool shade of my adoration cook breakfast for you every day & make love to you every night with stories that shake the sand between our sounds |
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