I am cursed
with a vivid imagination.
inventing so much in my head
that it can be hard to parse
what is real and what’s not.
I spend so much time daydreaming
that I’d rather play safely within my own boundaries,
than take any real risks.

It’s easy to attribute it to being a pisces,
Ever-lost in idealistic fantasies,
Playing over and over again
Scenes that may never be.

I get lost sometimes in foggy confusion,
Between existential wonderings and grounded realities.

For too many childhood memories are faded or gone.
I can look at old photos and reimagine a whole world,
Directing a play by play of what could be a mix of real and make believe,
Willing myself to search the dark caverns of my missing selves to find what I had lost.

The ability to even recollect the past week is lost to me.
These pieces I can never reclaim,
And I remain at a standstill.
I straddle hesitancy with the desire to go forth
or remain behind,
digging and digging in hopes of remembering anything
That will propel me forth,
Or help settle just an inkling of the unrest nestled inside me.

This past month, summer, year —
I’ve too busy to feel Anything
except the possibility of implosion.
Every few months there’s sudden impact of something so life-changing
it leaves wounds deep as craters.

Where from the celestial bodies do they come from,
and why do they keep finding their way to me?

The transition of summer to fall reminds us of our mortality
Mist rolling across the hills in the morning
As the chill prickles our skin.
The temperature is dropping
and so is my heart,
Into the ocean of my rib cage
To hibernate in its depths

I am drowning and don’t know how to reach the surface
Water in my lungs
Everything rising chokes in my throat
as I stare head on into the abyss,
Compressing aches that form like bruises.

I continue to unchain myself from the present as my only coping mechanism.

Why do I fold within myself?
Is this all there is to being a living, breathing, sentient mass?
To Suffer through extreme highs and lows and tune out somewhere in-between?

My grandmother doesn’t eat beef because of her reverence for cows,
Having grown up on a farm
With cattle that helped sow the fields.
I don’t have that kind of commitment in me,
Only to separating myself and my injuries,
To burying it all deep inside me.

Grief has latched itself onto my back like a little goblin
Whose sole existence is to remind me every day
Of what I’ve lost
Of what I’m missing
Of what I’ve become

I just want to feel…whole.
But what does it mean?
Is there such a thing?
And what does it mean to make a connection?
We give away a little bit of ourselves when we do anything and everything.
Any moment we share leaves an imprint,
A possibility,
A deviation.
On the bus we ride to work,
The shared meal with a friend,
The email sent before your shift ends,
The flowers we stop to buy on the way.

I wish it was easier to sink into the mundane and find peace.
I think of the way the running river currents carve their forms into rock walls,
The inevitable life and death cycles of the garden outside the window,
The sneakers I don every day that wear down to smooth soles.
That’s just the way it is.
Things come and go, as do my memories, as do the burdens I didn’t ask for.

When we think about caring for ourselves,
What does that look like?
To tend ourselves like gardens that need light, water, and warmth,
what is nourishing to you may be what’s right for me.
When I think of caring for myself, I think of what I can do but i don’t know what I need.

My heavy steps carry me from day to day,
And I learn a little more
how to reshape my mind,
To better carry my grief companion,
To meet myself in the dark waters,
To give myself time.

The least we can do every day is try to be kind.

Please forgive me for being too in my head,
For letting myself drown,
For being carried away by the wild winds of my daydreams.

We’ll make it through today,
to greet the joys and woes of tomorrow,
And learn to do it again and again.

Come find me in my meadow of crushed flowers and young trees.
Let’s sit for a moment,
No thoughts,
Just the breeze.

---

Written September 2022.

Performed for the first round of Wing Luke Museum’s 2022 Everything Everywhere All At Once-inspired House Party Writers Slam competition.

Theme: embrace the infinite spaces between us / string theory