I had settled into this feeling as home
This feeling of standing on a precipice
Toes curled over a rocky edge
Watching chunks of edged rock fall into the sea
I had grown familiar with knowing change was coming
But unsure of when or how
I would wake from dreams and scrawl in notebooks
Images of snakes and flaking skin
Each moon’s scarlet ocean was a blow to my whole being
Time began to feel impossible to gather
Trying to feel as much as I could
But even feeling became a challenge in the midst of endless running
Endless moving
Waiting for the pause that allows me to catch my breath
And deeply inhale
Running on half breaths and empty moments
Sitting on the edge of the bed and eyes drifting into nothingness
Eyes so tired I am not even seeing
Forgetting and wishing I could cry
What is withholding me from my ocean
The deepest tide pools
That drop to the center of the earth
Where volcanoes originate
And creatures never seen still find their way to light 
Create it themselves 
What is blocking me from feeling all the currents
Belly filled with sea water
Grasping at small fish too clever for my hands that feel clunky
Darting in and out of my fingers
When I remember to just stay still
Only for you small fish could I stay this still
I’ve been watching my past self burn away before my eyes
Her ashes falling in flakes
When everything in my heart says to run and run and run and don't stop
When my lungs can't find air anymore
Sweating even standing still
I laid down in the grass
Prayed for fields of fresh soil and ripe fruits
Only to find the earth on fire
Burning my hands and back
Hot embers charring my dress
The seams falling away at the melting heat
The threads of white dissolving in the land’s fever like small evaporated avalanches 
Will the earth splinter and crack under all this weight
My soul igniting embers burning 
Flames roaring 
Under the façade of cool waters
I am exhausted from treating a fire by burying it in sand
Give me full oxygen exhales
Flapping and pumping
Roaring the flames 
I need more air
I need dry fields to engulf in my flames
To watch the dead wood explode in the night
Wash me in fire
Wash me in flame
Exfoliate the deadened creases
In ember-ed ash
Soot across my eyes
Closed
Head bowed
Bathe me lord
Bathe me
Bathe me
Bathe me
Burn my decaying skins
In the heart of the flame
Stretch them out across stone to harden
Fold them in
Fill them with air
And let them dry out in the sun
I try to catch what isn't taken by the wind
but it dissolves in the way ash does
when you try to cling what to is already leaving
What is solid becomes powder under the pressure of
The same skin
Molted skin
Skin that's changed time and time again
With seven years time every cell unfamiliar
I am only a fragment of who I was then
Was I just prematurely grieving
Did my younger self know I was going to have to hold her tight and let her go all at the same time
I hear this is the hardest part of parenting
Was this a lesson in mothering myself
Severing the chord which binds me to her
Collecting the blood in sacred dishes
To drink at the foot of my mother
I'm sorry
Sweet mother I love you
Mama I love you
In just a few days we'll be saying goodbye to the first home I ever knew
And now this home
This watery home I learned of holy creation
Filled in darkness and warm emptiness
Filled lush and a cavity of blood and it's you all around me
Grieving all the leaving and returning and going and coming and leaving leaving leaving
Been shifting uncomfortably in my own skin for months now
And I'm convinced it's this missing time that I've never known
Moving in circles
Circles and circles and circles
Is this the illusion of reality I am feeling disappear
Is this what reconciling that time just keeps going feels like
How is memory being formed even as this moment is slipping away
How am I aching for something I never knew
The earth in a state I never knew
Forest floors my feet have never touched
Blades licking the bottoms of my feet
In soft caresses
That now are buried in concrete
People I've never known but I can feel
Can you grieve a future you're yet to know
Can you grieve what is yet to come
Can you grieve knowing what is now will no longer be
Can you grieve over the knowing
Can you grieve empty spaces
That are only filled in with memory
Been asking for the spaces that feel like empty holes, black holes, forgotten spaces to be filled again
Shedding the illusion I am without darkness
Shadow woman, I know you're there
I cannot hide you
you show me my greatest weaknesses
even when I am not ready to see them
I promise you
each time I come back
with my knees to the earth
and palms open wide
I will not deny you
through kneading my knuckles in clay
and pulsing my hips in perfect timing
with the undulating tides below
Ears held in the banks of your murky waters
place my ear close to my heart
and hear your crying out
its time that we make peace
Its time that you unweight your shoulders
hunched and chest concave
I come to you with offerings
The voice I hear from you sounds an awful lot
Like the voice I hear from god
I’m learning to listen, to hear you
I'm brought to tears in hearing your name and repeating it on my lips. Is this the divine? All this time when I thought I was writing love poems to a singular person, was I writing them for god? That holy rapture floods my eyes and I'm broken alive, plunged underwater and I can only hear cries of the fish whose fossils lie frozen in tundra heats and melting glaciers, will we find your body there, sweet lord? Will I ever know the embrace of your body? Do you believe I can be baptized in your love years too late, or right on time? Do you feel time as cyclical? Then we have met here before and will again and maybe then I will know the missed moments I denied your love, your knowing and castrated my senses to fall into material bounds that know no depth, no sea to catch my tears. Since when have my tears felt like the water anointed with my grandmothers oils that overwhelm my senses, that slip me under to narrow hallways, beige carpeting and the realization that I have always known the art of dissociation. In these memories I am newborn, I am unknown, I have always been and always was, for I was born in your womb sweet grandmother, torn from your womb sweet grandmother, grandma hold me in the strength of your arms that knew how to hold my mother.
These are messages from you
I’m learning to listen, to hear you
That the sensations, the thoughts, the continuous messages I keep receiving in single words: 
shed, surrender, integrate
These are messages from you
That what I’ve been needing to shed this whole time is everything that keeps me from you, and in turn, keeps me from me