A tool kit for a good morning, enjoy.
Wearing the crystal that my grandma bought me writing down my new moon intentions in the sage smoke I practice saying good bye again. There are red & blue flashing lights across the school yard yet the street seems blessedly calm just before midnight. The room feels warm & inviting like a secret. Fleeting in its beauty. The cat is sitting on the edge of the bed eyes half open dozing. The cat is drunk on the calm too. Sirens wail in the distance but the lights had moved on. The city at night was so lush & intoxicating even in a town of 300,000 people or so. There was room to breathe here. Right here in this bachelor apartment in fact. One tiny room in the attic of an old white house facing east to where the sun would be rising over the city in six hours. The large picture window was never quite drawn. There were countless hours I had spent looking out it at nothing in particular. I think I would have been lonely if I closed it. This window had become the window into my soul where I watched the days unfold for hours. It was really what made me feel like I was home more than anything else. How I would miss climbing the stairs through the dark waiting for the soft glow of street lamps through the glass to welcome me. I sat in the chairs beside the window as one would sit and listen to a surmon at the church across the street. These four walls too had sheltered me from enough storms tempered both by internal & external winds. A quiet little sanctuary on Avenue H that you would hardly notice walking by. Here tucked into my cozy nook of the world I had begun to learn to become myself. As if I need any reason to fall in love with this room more, yet even on the final night it fills be with honeysuckle memories. A room of my own. A room that my mother helped me furnish. A room that my father could not stand up in. A room up three flights of stairs & through two dead bolted doors. Secure. A feeling I hadn’t been recently acquainted to when I took the room three years ago. It gave me room to grow roots a little. To tread softly between the broken edges. To imagine what life could be like outside my little room. In the end that’s what took me away from here. Not fear, or pain, or promise, but hope. A little seed of hope that I had picked up somewhere along the way, which just lacked the care & attention of hundreds of hours devoted to its realization; that it was meant to be more than a seed in a hole or a charming attic apartment, it was meant to sprout. The green candle burned steadily through the night illuminating the last of the posters on the wall: an astronaut butterfly set to discover the unknown, an awkward portrait from gentle fingers, a constant reminder, a landscape blurred by love, a picture of me holding a baby in a wooden frame. Out of view but equally illuminated one picture of three friends embracing, one now dead, one across the country, and the other unreachable, a postcard with a rose & a love poem written on it, a wedding invitation hand drawn three years ago, a picture of a pirate holding up her knife under a scrap of magazine which read we’d have a laugh coz we’re all mates, and a hand scrawled note on a scrap of paper which promised you’re wonderful. On the table beside the bed the tokens continued: two bottles of essential oils (lavender & citrus), one lighter & half a joint, a black tin with pink flowers, a crystal candle holder with green candle, $20,000 bank note from Vietnam, an owl, a card that read determination is so beautiful, a doll from Bolivia of an old woman smoking a pipe, a purple poach of white sage, a golden Buddha with most of his features rubbed off, three photographs of people smiling, a purple notebook and 108 malla beads. In the entire of the house there was not much left, but these things were the last to go because they wanted to say goodbye too. In so much as any assortment of gobbledegook can have anything at all to say to a room with four walls & a large picture window. If I were to put away these things & walk out into the street I would loose all of my context that binds me to this one continuous life. I would become a nomad undefined by the the things I surround myself with instead defined by all the things that I can do without. I have thought of this before, however it is always the most appealing to fantasize about on the eve of a big move. As the train goes by out the window I can see myself climbing aboard to destination unknown. It is always much harder to stay & say good bye. Which is why I am quite fond of them. The ending of all things is inevitable, and so I hope I get to show up for the death of each one of them. Again, and again, and again the heart breaks. And again, and again, and once again the heart continues to beat. What could be more magical than the repetition of this pattern. A seedling sprouts her wings. A room that can, even bare, witness this miraculous transformation humbly full of calm radiant glow.
The first time our lips groped each other in gentle awkwardness a tidal wave overcame my body drowning my brain in the dizzying waves. You touched my face in that loving way we had whispered to each other about as kids. Except you weren’t the tuxedo mask or Kurt Cobain of our fantasies. You had soft hands that smelt like vanilla body spray and truth or dare perspiration. You pulled away while I was still struggling to catch my breath and laughed in my face. You said that its no big deal to kiss after all it was just a game. Even though I had tried to say to you many nights in the dark that I could fall in love with any gender, but what I didn’t say was that I was falling in love with you. I think of all those times we would practice our make up and try to find the right angle to make our barely there breasts seem most appealing in the mirror before lying together on the bed legs entwined talking about our futures. You said that we had to practice doing it for the boys, to attract a husband that we would wow with our nubile yoga bodies, and cook fancy meals for on special occasions. But I knew no boy would appreciate you like I do. He would be intimidated by your Amazonian figure, and fierce intellect. He wouldn’t know the hours you devoted to becoming your best self. He wouldn’t know the way your dad sometimes scared you, but you still loved him. He wouldn’t know that you think carnations are tacky as gifts. But I knew. I had watched you growing up all these years, blooming into not a woman but a force of nature. And I was the one reminding you that you were beautiful, and that shared your anxieties about sex and love and romance. I couldn’t say to you though that I was falling in love with you. You were my best friend, and if our parents found out no more sleep overs, no more friendship, no more innocence. Besides we agreed that we weren’t ready to have sex yet anyways. You wanted to wait for marriage, and I wanted to wait for more body hair. But then you kissed me on a dare at your birthday party while your parents were out in front of all of our friends and shipwrecked my timid heart. In that moment as my lips parted to your infinite wetness letting it wash away all my fear of being seen when I too felt like I might be a goddess of the sea, you laughed at me. You told me that it meant nothing. You could kiss me anytime that you wanted, and it wouldn’t mean anything to you because you are not gay. I am just your friend. And sometimes friends kiss because boys like it when they do, and you, my friend, really want a boyfriend for your birthday, and I am never going to be that boyfriend because I can’t hide how soft my lips are, or how smooth my cheek is, or how tiny my hands are. My tiny hands that could never encircle your waist in the strong titanic embrace that you dream of. I wouldn’t even know how to love you if I could. We hadn’t been practicing for this moment. The moment I would dissolve into your lips. I buried those feelings like a treasure closely guarded. Kept under lock & key, but always just below the surface. I had seen the ocean in your grey eyes, and I tried to swim back there everyday, but you were always looking somewhere else.
Self Study 