the art of dying and living--i have been loved.
I’m painting my eyes black to match what my insides feel like. The blood still runs. The pain hasn’t subsided. It’s been over a week now. My movement is forward-ever. I will not even allow myself to stumble or step into the past. I recognise the past for what it is and can move in other directions, knowing where I’ve been and how it’s been. I’ve silver wings dangling from my earlobes to replace the ones that were ripped from my shoulder blades, cleanly as the moon slicing the night sky. No feathers remain where once I had a back full of many.
* * *
In a little over a week, I’ll be in Baja, swimming with dolphins, watching whales, and riding a donkey to see ruins. I wouldn’t even be going if my father weren’t paying for everything-from my transportation to lodging. He knew how hungry I was for experiences and how healing seeing new things is for me, so he found a way for it to happen for all of us. I’m overjoyed at the thought of being in a foreign land with my family. How I adore my family. A few years ago, I didn’t feel this strongly, but we’ve survived a lot of odds and obstacles to stand where we do now. Having my brothers and father is almost like owning my own street gang or at very least like being related to the Marx Brothers, if they knew how to fight as well as they knew how to make others laugh. Raw poetry, fist-justice, endless laughing at the self: this is my family.
I’ve been surrounded by so much comfort and attention that I think, “Yes, I have been loved.” Yesterday, Therese pulled me aside, putting two long, slender hands on either side of my jaw. We looked at each other openly for a moment. I was close enough to see freckles on her cheeks and in the colour of her irises, a pale blue that reminded me of fish scales when I went deep sea diving. She kissed my face-once and then, repeatedly. “What are you doing for the weekend? I’d wondered where you’d been,” and she asked me to repeat my plans, making sure I was not alone for any of the coming days. She invited me places and covered me up in her arms, saying, “Tonight, I will get you drunk. I will get you delicious.”
She calls me lady and has for the two or more years we’ve known one another. I know it to be a compliment from her tongue. Were anyone else to call me lady, I might be inclined to make a scene. This is Therese, however. We have history and affection between us. She was supposed to be gone to Mexico and British Columbia, but she is miraculously back. When we walk, long arms and blonde hair, people ask if we are sisters. “No,” we smile, “we are not sisters.” We bump hips and grab hands to propel each other further along. I am glad to have a person in my life that could maybe be my sister-and especially more now that I am narrowing in all the places I want, but staying lush in the places I always was (hips, breasts, ass). We could maybe be sisters.
Then, I checked my mail slot and found letters from my former roommate Mirelle, Miss Miriam, my father, and old next-door neighbour Siobhan, letters that I can hold in my hands and reopen when I’m feeling sad. Melinda invited me to travel with her, The Logan Who Would One Day Be Che told me to come to Cuernavaca, and Ross left a message on my answering machine, drawling like he is prone to do, all soft and buttery with the late hour. I keep thinking that I might one day live in Mexico, maybe one day soon. I don’t want to be anywhere familiar. Too many ghosts haunt.
I love handwritten letters, and will spend some of today or tomorrow writing them to people who’ve made my life infinite. I still need to send a thank you note to John’s mother for her exquisite hospitality. For that one, I am making my own paper because I want the letter to be as nice as she made me feel at her table. Another will go to his best friend, Jen, who also made me feel accepted and whom I very much liked. Ink is more intimate than almost anything else.
Tomorrow, I am going to see Christa Bell, a crush from once upon a time. Although I have no crushes on anyone now, I am still very much looking forward to seeing her. She’s the third ranked poet in the nation and more than that, she is my friend, a sister in dark skin and dreadlocks. She is a goddess, all warm honey and self-acceptance. She makes you love yourself more because she loves herself so much. One of my favourite pieces of hers involves a person beat boxing and she hums her name in an Om chant. Inspired by her, I wrote my own Om chant with my name. It appears below-some of you may remember it, but it’s good to remind myself of the things I thought I lost.
Om, Talullah Jewel. Om, Talullah Jewel. Find the goddess within your skin, the siren in your throat, and the maenad in your claws. Remember that you were born pink and guiltless. You are of this earth, from the sky, in this water, licked by fire, you, elemental child, woman-baby with the smile of a sad guitar, the hips of a prowling wildcat, and the eyes of a feral storm. You were made of love by parents who loved each other. You were created in a womb that nourished you, rocked in a belly that taught you rhythm.
You were not made of sadness. You were made of the things that have always haunted and stirred you: cat’s whiskers and summer bonfires, ocean tides and pools of starfish babies, laughter and dandelion seeds, firelight and tree houses, weeping willow limbs and the cottonwood roots that through the riverbed run wild, puppy-wiggles and kitten-tongues lapping sandpaper kisses, the moment when your laughter turns into crying and country roads with unruly ivy vines roaming everywhere, sweating ammunition in pits of boys with bullets for smiles and how swimming in the sea makes your hair all stiff with salt, smiling dogs and burning things just to see fire, love-poems found in the laugh-lines of an old person and spinning to music like a firefly-gypsy, making moth-wings in the snow and angels in the sand, eating ice cream until you’re gummy and making friends with a grasshopper that happens to land on your pant leg, the stroke of a lover’s hand on the inside of your wrist and the way your Grammy would sing songs into your ear when you were tiny, sea-otter crushes and fantasies you had of crashing cars in a demolition derby with a monkey, the sighs we issue when content and your father on the telephone wire saying that he misses you, pink bicycle seats and inventing gadgets just because, vintage satin lingerie and your mother’s fresh-squeezed juice, and love, love like war and peace.
So Om, Talullah Jewel. Om, Talullah Jewel. Remember who you are, little planet. Remember that what you most want is to love and be loved. Be pure. Don’t eat food that makes you feel guilty. Don’t drink to erase your pain. Look it in the eye-down to the wells of the pupil-and make your peace. Find your reckoning with the past. Without this, you will not have a future . Don’t draw smoke into your lungs to forget. Remember and forgive yourself for the roles you have played in your sorrows. Forgive those around you for the hurts they have caused and then, forget the pain.
Talullah Jewel, you with the stare of prophecy and hands that look like they’ve been praying, you are a queen. You are the strangest branch of a crooked tree. You with the body that passion made, you were meant for beauty. You have a face that looks like it needs cared for and the strongest shoulders your side of the world. Keep them steady, despite your burdens. Stay gentle, even when you are scared. Your fear is not your enemy, but letting it rule you is. Wage war against this enemy with your kindness. Bark when others would bite. Love when you would run. Let love be your compass and the stars, your brothers and sisters. Grow fat on good companionship and time well spent. Allow yourself to be free. Don’t be afraid to be beautiful.
So Om, Talullah Jewel, there was more to your life than this, more to your dreams than chance. You were meant to be a child of divine wonder. Now, be it.
I still believe all the things I wrote. Send me addresses. Make your own Om chants. Share them with me, por favor? I want to reach the world with fingertips and pen. Everything else feels too huge and I am just a tiny temple that once held thousands. I am empty and then, full of blood and prayers and milagros.
talullah jewel
* * *
In a little over a week, I’ll be in Baja, swimming with dolphins, watching whales, and riding a donkey to see ruins. I wouldn’t even be going if my father weren’t paying for everything-from my transportation to lodging. He knew how hungry I was for experiences and how healing seeing new things is for me, so he found a way for it to happen for all of us. I’m overjoyed at the thought of being in a foreign land with my family. How I adore my family. A few years ago, I didn’t feel this strongly, but we’ve survived a lot of odds and obstacles to stand where we do now. Having my brothers and father is almost like owning my own street gang or at very least like being related to the Marx Brothers, if they knew how to fight as well as they knew how to make others laugh. Raw poetry, fist-justice, endless laughing at the self: this is my family.
I’ve been surrounded by so much comfort and attention that I think, “Yes, I have been loved.” Yesterday, Therese pulled me aside, putting two long, slender hands on either side of my jaw. We looked at each other openly for a moment. I was close enough to see freckles on her cheeks and in the colour of her irises, a pale blue that reminded me of fish scales when I went deep sea diving. She kissed my face-once and then, repeatedly. “What are you doing for the weekend? I’d wondered where you’d been,” and she asked me to repeat my plans, making sure I was not alone for any of the coming days. She invited me places and covered me up in her arms, saying, “Tonight, I will get you drunk. I will get you delicious.”
She calls me lady and has for the two or more years we’ve known one another. I know it to be a compliment from her tongue. Were anyone else to call me lady, I might be inclined to make a scene. This is Therese, however. We have history and affection between us. She was supposed to be gone to Mexico and British Columbia, but she is miraculously back. When we walk, long arms and blonde hair, people ask if we are sisters. “No,” we smile, “we are not sisters.” We bump hips and grab hands to propel each other further along. I am glad to have a person in my life that could maybe be my sister-and especially more now that I am narrowing in all the places I want, but staying lush in the places I always was (hips, breasts, ass). We could maybe be sisters.
Then, I checked my mail slot and found letters from my former roommate Mirelle, Miss Miriam, my father, and old next-door neighbour Siobhan, letters that I can hold in my hands and reopen when I’m feeling sad. Melinda invited me to travel with her, The Logan Who Would One Day Be Che told me to come to Cuernavaca, and Ross left a message on my answering machine, drawling like he is prone to do, all soft and buttery with the late hour. I keep thinking that I might one day live in Mexico, maybe one day soon. I don’t want to be anywhere familiar. Too many ghosts haunt.
I love handwritten letters, and will spend some of today or tomorrow writing them to people who’ve made my life infinite. I still need to send a thank you note to John’s mother for her exquisite hospitality. For that one, I am making my own paper because I want the letter to be as nice as she made me feel at her table. Another will go to his best friend, Jen, who also made me feel accepted and whom I very much liked. Ink is more intimate than almost anything else.
Tomorrow, I am going to see Christa Bell, a crush from once upon a time. Although I have no crushes on anyone now, I am still very much looking forward to seeing her. She’s the third ranked poet in the nation and more than that, she is my friend, a sister in dark skin and dreadlocks. She is a goddess, all warm honey and self-acceptance. She makes you love yourself more because she loves herself so much. One of my favourite pieces of hers involves a person beat boxing and she hums her name in an Om chant. Inspired by her, I wrote my own Om chant with my name. It appears below-some of you may remember it, but it’s good to remind myself of the things I thought I lost.
Om, Talullah Jewel. Om, Talullah Jewel. Find the goddess within your skin, the siren in your throat, and the maenad in your claws. Remember that you were born pink and guiltless. You are of this earth, from the sky, in this water, licked by fire, you, elemental child, woman-baby with the smile of a sad guitar, the hips of a prowling wildcat, and the eyes of a feral storm. You were made of love by parents who loved each other. You were created in a womb that nourished you, rocked in a belly that taught you rhythm.
You were not made of sadness. You were made of the things that have always haunted and stirred you: cat’s whiskers and summer bonfires, ocean tides and pools of starfish babies, laughter and dandelion seeds, firelight and tree houses, weeping willow limbs and the cottonwood roots that through the riverbed run wild, puppy-wiggles and kitten-tongues lapping sandpaper kisses, the moment when your laughter turns into crying and country roads with unruly ivy vines roaming everywhere, sweating ammunition in pits of boys with bullets for smiles and how swimming in the sea makes your hair all stiff with salt, smiling dogs and burning things just to see fire, love-poems found in the laugh-lines of an old person and spinning to music like a firefly-gypsy, making moth-wings in the snow and angels in the sand, eating ice cream until you’re gummy and making friends with a grasshopper that happens to land on your pant leg, the stroke of a lover’s hand on the inside of your wrist and the way your Grammy would sing songs into your ear when you were tiny, sea-otter crushes and fantasies you had of crashing cars in a demolition derby with a monkey, the sighs we issue when content and your father on the telephone wire saying that he misses you, pink bicycle seats and inventing gadgets just because, vintage satin lingerie and your mother’s fresh-squeezed juice, and love, love like war and peace.
So Om, Talullah Jewel. Om, Talullah Jewel. Remember who you are, little planet. Remember that what you most want is to love and be loved. Be pure. Don’t eat food that makes you feel guilty. Don’t drink to erase your pain. Look it in the eye-down to the wells of the pupil-and make your peace. Find your reckoning with the past. Without this, you will not have a future . Don’t draw smoke into your lungs to forget. Remember and forgive yourself for the roles you have played in your sorrows. Forgive those around you for the hurts they have caused and then, forget the pain.
Talullah Jewel, you with the stare of prophecy and hands that look like they’ve been praying, you are a queen. You are the strangest branch of a crooked tree. You with the body that passion made, you were meant for beauty. You have a face that looks like it needs cared for and the strongest shoulders your side of the world. Keep them steady, despite your burdens. Stay gentle, even when you are scared. Your fear is not your enemy, but letting it rule you is. Wage war against this enemy with your kindness. Bark when others would bite. Love when you would run. Let love be your compass and the stars, your brothers and sisters. Grow fat on good companionship and time well spent. Allow yourself to be free. Don’t be afraid to be beautiful.
So Om, Talullah Jewel, there was more to your life than this, more to your dreams than chance. You were meant to be a child of divine wonder. Now, be it.
I still believe all the things I wrote. Send me addresses. Make your own Om chants. Share them with me, por favor? I want to reach the world with fingertips and pen. Everything else feels too huge and I am just a tiny temple that once held thousands. I am empty and then, full of blood and prayers and milagros.
talullah jewel