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| [6:28:26 PM] Leia Herrera: I was at the free market today, with all the sunshine, colour and community one could want. My friend Anushka was at her usual free poetry station and I asked her to write something for me about distance and love, for you. Please accept it.
-Leia | | |
| I want to tell them. I want to catch their swinging hands, jerk on their sleeves, their arms, and bring their heads close to my heart, pressed against my chest. Can you feel that, I ask them. Do you know what that is? Isn't it clear? Inside flowing like an ocean riptide in a moment; sucked in through the sands of my plexus-- thick like honey-- violent like frothy torrents around the rocky bend, crushing everything into everything else, carrying it forever through and through. Orbital. Circulatory. Astronomical trajectory. Looking out over myself from a tree. From seventh story balcony. From a cliff, a cloud, the moon. There he is, flailing like a madman in the darkness of uncounted shadows in quiet unlit rooms. (And in the busiest streets of the busiest cities) Grabbing hold of collars of passersby. Screaming into the ears of bystanders. Startled with imagination and dream. Silently in a room with a single light. Electricity burning for warmth, but only reaching the surfaces before being brushed off like so much dandruff in the kept cold. The buzz of soft music pours across eyes fixated with eyelids falling. When the sun rises, the training begins. Did you see that? Now, watch this. Far from underneath piles of crushed concrete, love is sequestered like all too much love we have nowhere to put. Drop it in the ocean. Shoot it into space. It's so heavy. So costly... No; make it into something. Throw it in their faces! Show them what they've done! It isn't their fault. The dust blows some away. The river carries off a little more. But I am erosion, crushing the binds with miniscule precision at particular perspectives. As the creation of a mountain clouds hiding the tops, the carving of a canyon mist shrouding the bottoms, of course it is seen. So big do they reign that the local inhabitants forget their monumental existence. Still holding onto arms soaked in tears-- or is it sweat? Tugging. Still pointing and raving about the force of something, that can only be understood by the earth it stands on. By the chest that holds it. By the heart that moves it. By the voice which hardly arises. | | |
| I study clown because it helps me understand ideas, actions, and emotions that are difficult, scary, uncomfortable, weird, and otherwise generally unwanted. It helps me embody, and humor these parts of myself-- parts of being human, for myself and others to see and experience. | | |
| My insecurities flutter around like a leaf in a breeze, ultimately falling, it seems.
On the upswing, I have just enough strength to pull myself over the ledge
Where I look down fearfully in consideration of the necessity to eventually lower myself down.
So, I shuffle in the wind chaotically.
I've been frantically reaching and grabbing at eddies to lift myself enough to make it happen;
This relationship with the sky-- so vast, and unholdable. I love it, and it seems, am allowed no grasp on it.
The wind runs through her. She pulls me to the sun, holds the warmth, speaks my name, sheds our tears
Lying on the ground I can only look up upon her vast beauty, futilely clawing at insubstantial invisibility I so long for.
The fear of falling for so long put holes in my veins. The change of seasons turned me dark and flimsy.
It began raining and the muds began to grow around my flattened botanical body.
I am just one part of such a big tree, being shed like shirts and pants under safety and shelter of bed covers.
My windows moist with condensation, dripping like tears from the confusion of cold being bombarded by the heat.
Leaves project shadows on my window. And litter my sidewalk. I step on them. Track them into my house when I go out to smoke.
They are crushed under my steps as little flattened hearts which have fallen from heaven. Red. Red. Red.
My breath steams inside. Smokes outside. And burns inside.
Burning of embers gasping for air-- firing sparks from the wetness fading warmth in the night. She brought me the breeze that allowed my breath to jump to new nourishment.
She holds the sun and the moon I will never touch.
She carries the rain clouds that cry on the trees outside, weighing down the leaves, slapping them to the ground.
I only have these wet cruel shoes to crush them with. The small fire hoping to burn them.
I have the cold mud that comes inside, and isn't cleaned out for months and months. | | |
| I think being/feeling alone is my biggest fear.
Feeling unloved, unheard, or unavailable.
Being lost in myself, unable to accept anything coming in.
Like living at the bottom of the ocean. Sure, there are other fish,
But there's no light. No voices.
The depths pull at me as I work to the surface. Maybe some day I'll make it.
Where is your fishing line? I know I'd rather be caught and eaten,
Than be drawn back to the darkness.
Maybe I'll catch a breath of air for once,
Before you throw me on ice
Where I can sleep without nightmares, also for once. | | |
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