Remember the spaces.

We are sitting in the country somewhere. Watermelon and warm grass. Rolling fields under the bluest of skies, stretched out for miles, as wide as they are high. We catch the slightest scent of smoke- perhaps a grill or bonfire from faraway or maybe our space itself, between the sun, the heat, and the spark between you and I, filled with serenity, and ground, and wild grinning eyes.

I'm often held and rocked in the space of fire and spring, and us in the countryside.

Remember the spaces. The spaces are what count. Always the spaces. Not the answers. Not the destinations. Not the passage of time. 

Be an encourager.

I think everyone should encourage everyone. We have enough self-created walls and people who unknowingly also build them into our psyches, simply by discouraging us. Encouragers build doors instead of walls just by believing.

There is strength in being seen.

I see you standing there

with a mouthful of poems

yet a head full of doubt.

You are soft yet softening,

while needing to be split open,

and poured out.

So let go.

All the things that you've carried,

all the ways that you've drowned,

all the beauty you'd forgotten,

every flame burned out.

There is strength in being seen. 

Quiet synchronicity.

Don't simply brush away the inexplicable connectedness we'll occasionally taste as we experience certain people, places and works of art. These mere seconds of quiet synchronicity and understanding count. They always, always count. You just have to know and believe it.

"So keep your head up

Keep your love"

If people were seasons.

illustration by Lizzy Stewart

I have decided that if people were seasons

you would be summer. 

The way you burn as hot as the sun itself

while seeking naked truths.

Celestial like the solstice,

always bursting into bloom.

I'd like to know you.

I'd like to meet you in a place neither of us has been, 

with sunlight and white buildings 

and blue seas and golden hills. 

I'd like to hike and stretch and swim

and find music so good it melts 

our shoulders and ears and eyes. 

I'd like to share vibrant food 

and care for you

be calm with you,

learn your rhythms,

your mannerisms,

dive into your mind.

I'd like to know you,

yet not worry about knowing you,

and realize that all we have is now, 

and that in the now,

there's no such thing as time.

The moon is still silver.

illustration by Duy Huynh

I meant to tell you 
the moon is still silver.
It still rises same as it used to rise,
shedding light onto cities and lands
softened by the coming of night.

I meant to tell you that I still gaze up,
same as when you were here, 
and that in the stillest of hours
while carrying a heart 
as wide as the sea,
if I soak in that moon, 
it may bring some relief.

I meant to tell you that
I still taste your song in me. 
It comes in waves
under silent skies,
It threatens my sanity. 

How you came and you went 
long before I could tell you
I didn't want you 
to leave.

But you did.
And the moon is still silver.

So here I stand 
left with echos
of us 
And those nights
that used 
to breathe.

All was wild.

I'd like to stand with you at the base of the mountains and just look. I'd like to care about the way they collide with trees and rivers, the way your breath collides with air, the way I can get lost in the sounds of both, and in that moment, all was wild. 

photo source

A thousand reveries.

I wish to inhabit daydreams. 

To catch them as they flee,

to tie them 'round my wrists,

to be bound by a thousand reveries. 

To ride out longings until they're gone

rather than left behind, and aching.

In love with this tune:

"Hey now, letters burning by my bed for you
Hey now, I can feel my instincts here for you, hey now
By my bed for you, hey now, hey now"

Everyday poetry.

Everyday poetry: the collision of breath and winter, the pause between daylight and dusk, the breakthrough in the body, the sweet spot in the song, the photos in the attic, the rediscovery of a note, the strokes of paint on canvas, the silence in the nights, and the space after letting go.

illustration by Frida Stenmark

When you reach your edge.

When you reach your edge, soften. 

Soften until you slip through the constraints and can create 

a new rhythm, a new route, a new release. 

Water is soft, yet powerful. 

Reach your edge, and soften.