Enchantment 

My body is fire and the flood.
It is victim and assailant.
Prisoner and guard.

My body is not one I know. 
My blood is poisoned by its strange alchemy.
I cannot feign familiarity. 

My body doesn't belong to me.
I don't recognize these memories.
I don't want to remember these scars.

I find my body in the wake of my destruction.
It is the detonation.
It is the explosion.

My body means 
danger. 
Means     safety. 

My body means
                home.
Means     hell.

But it is mine. 

We are one.
Poison turned blood. 

June 12th, 2020

It’s amazing how a single word can make the world collapse around you,
and make everything make sense all at the same time.
How one word can be the missing link 
to the last four years of your life.

Adenoma.

There were a lot of other words staining the page:
well-defined...pituitary gland...usually benign…
hyperintensity...frontal lobe...multiple sclerosis.
All I saw was the reason for my ailments.
The reason my body has revolted against its borders.

The doctors say it isn’t a diagnosis.
It’s just an impression. They want more time.
Time to compare this picture with the last.

But there is no conviction in the word impression,
and time is something I am always running out of.
Something I never have enough of. 
The doctors say it is something. 
They tell me to have hope.

The word feels foreign. The feeling even more so.
Hope. What is it?
The held breath? The shocked silence? The empty promise?
Is it the in-between? The unknown? The untapped potential? 

I don't know the answer, but I know it is there,
and I am ready to welcome it with open arms.
I am ready to sit with it. To wait with it. 
To hold it close to my heart. To let it heal the hurt.

The Flowers Grow Anyway

Lately I find myself struggling between love and hate,
between healing and heartbreak.
I want to write of hope, of happiness.
I want to inspire others through the things I have transpired but,
my heart is heavy.
My mind stained black.
I am still learning how to heal and that means sifting through the anger.
The pain. The sadness. 
It means learning to let go,
to live and let learn.
I know where I want to go.
Where I want to be.
What I want to do but,
I am not patient with the process.
I want to run at my own speed.
It's hard for me to share my thoughts because they feel incomplete.
Like a story without an ending.
I am trying to help others heal without knowing how to myself 
Trying to teach them to breathe and let them know they aren't alone 
while I am suffocating in my own sadness.
I try to turn the other cheek. 
As if I can just show the world the new me.
As if my past doesn't affect me.
But I know this isn't true,
because I find my past in the fragments of my future
and it is this jagged beauty that has me drawing lines in the sand.
It is this broken heart finally letting the sun in.
Haven’t you seen how many things can grow through the cracks?
Don’t you know how hard the buds work to push themselves into bloom?
You can’t tell me nothing good will come from this,
I’ve never known beauty to come from anywhere but pain.