Graveyards are so much more than a final resting place
They are a collection of memories, shattered dreams, and half forgotten hopes.
A collection of consciousness laying underneath a curated lawn.
Perhaps that’s why, on the clearest day, a breeze always blows
It’s the whispered conversation of souls
In the spiraling modernity of a wired and connected world the influencers peer out of their square boxes. Against a pink or beige or golden background, they all share the same message.
Self-care. A modern woman practices a self-care routine.
The influencer will preach with the utmost sincerity. She is a trend setting prophet, and her bible is whatever pastel colored bottle has paid enough to grace her screen today.
The modern woman, her hair in a bun that’s perched atop her head, or in a day old sweatshirt that smells faintly of infant piss or vomit (or both) nods.
Self-care. She must find herself a self care routine.
But time is fleeting. How can one practice self care in the midst of a thousand daily chores that triple the minute one gets missed? Especially if the modern woman is expected to work, cook, clean, and perfectly parent at every god-damn minute of every single day.
Modernity is a dream
A beautiful one, sold in 10 second chunks of neutral colored smiles.
In reality, it’s profits for clicks. The capitalization of consumption.
And yet, still we scroll.
For self-care purposes, of course.
My dear,
You were never meant to pick up the pieces of a life cut too short.
It is the cruelty of existence that requires you to soldier on. It is not God’s will, it is not fate. It is…happenstance. And you have met it with wide eyed courage.
You must feel forgotten. Overlooked and overwhelmed. Angry at the world or God or the Universe for leaving you behind.
Guilty for your anger. Guilty for your rage. Guilty for all the roiling emotions that ebb and flow with the circadian rhythm of the day.
Because you’re the one who stayed.
My dear, I see you. I see your youth. I see your bright soul alight with childish wonder.
I see how it’s dimmed now that you can no longer explore the vast expanse of this incandescent world with the man you love.
You’re a changeling. Alone in the bizarre shadow called Earth now stripped of light.
But please remember…
Grief is not attached to morality.
Grief simply is.
You will feel knives of anger, shards of hatred, and moments of spite. You will feel sparks of joy, bubbles of love, and waves of compassion. And all this will barrage you in staccato rhymes of confusion.
Because you were left behind.
But my dear, you are not forgotten. Though it may seem that way.
You were left behind. But we are by your side.
A roar
Like rushing water
Fills my head
It’s all encompassing
enveloping me in a frenzy of fear
impossible to break free
The river rages and heightens until the flood waters peak
and I drift slowly back down
to reality.
It’s amazing, you know.
The extent to which women’s work is undervalued.
Take the Bayeux Tapestry
A stunning piece of work, handmade circa the 11th Century.
The tapestry tells a tale of knights and battles and victories and failings. A tale of kings and their conquests.
What remains? Steel and Armor?
No. Cotton and linen. Threaded and knotted and spliced and faded. It’s stalwart against the greedy hands of time.
Men. They are the ones remembered. Odo and Harold and Hastings probably. A tale of men, created by women. A history where the historians are forgotten.
Not the skills passed down from the old to the young. Not the time and effort and artistry. Not the artist(s) and historians and knowledge makers and holders.
Not the women. They are…overlooked.
But the tapestry remains. And so too does their memory, if you choose to look.
Love is an ugly word.
One that makes the mouth contort and twist round itself.
First the tongue must backbend before springing off the roof of the mouth to hover in midair.
Next, bared teeth bite the lip; scraping skin before the sweet release.
And the word floats like a promise of peace in the wake of violence.
She was born in the quiet hush of a snowstorm. Fifteen years later, there’s nothing quiet about her.
She’s as fierce as a tsunami and loud as a tornado.
Snow shrinks before the spring, and she, she is the raging river that’s left behind.
What will the memories of this past year be? Perhaps, one of the hardest years of my life.
Will they be filled with the rose colored tinge of nostalgia, like the pain of childbirth that time and contentment erase?
Or will they darken the day, coming in as sharp, stinging nettles in the surprise of their remembrance?
It’s easy to think
I’m abstract terms about “struggle”
But much harder
When your child is hundreds of miles away
And crying on the phone
Loneliness
It’s a feeling we’re all familiar with
But have you heard
Of lonely satisfaction?
It’s the feeling of newly unwrapped presents
The chill of first snow
The scent of your lovers sweatshirt
Found, tossed aside, in the corner of your house.
Lonely satisfaction is
Coming home from vacation
Or 501 pm on a Friday
It’s things accomplished
But a future
Not yet materialized.
Hipstory 