Giant Birds

The child found me here,
I guess she did pretend to die.
The buzz, this time a burn,
In the body it hides.
Head hash, it sizzles skin
When there is nothing but air.
Waves alive and crashing crypts
Pull in my head at my hair.

Used up the love in my bones,
Come wash off, silence the burn.
Treadmill sweeps, increase the pounding,
It's deception of work.
Try distraction, shifting teeth, the pain
Might make sense of it,
A reason for discomfort, it diffuses the
Rest of it.

Redeemed by giant birds,
The shapes that swim through the wreck,
Saved me, saved me.

Can't make sense of what I see.
My time was broken up, I'm three.
Every time it heals I stop honoring.
I owe it to myself to hurt,
But I can't just keep remembering.

I live the last wishes of a dying girl.
She thought I'd be her.
I had to go to see her learn,
She had to leave for me to rise.
I watched her yearn for my existence
But she was beautiful.

We saw giant birds in our mind.
I was less myself but saw everyone else.
I didn't know a soul until I met her,
Couldn't feel their eyes.

Angry, sometimes, for being
Let in on the secret.
I'd hate, but I almost can't remember you.
I love you, but don't come visit.

Please don't pretend to die this time. 

Please don't pretend to die.

Baby scene dream

I just dreamt that I was nine months pregnant and hadn't prepared for the birth at all, hadn't even thought about it, and three days before my due date it all hit me. I was so afraid. More afraid than I ever had been in my entire life. I didn't want to go through childbirth. I was afraid of the pain, I was afraid of the interventions to take away the pain, and I was afraid of dying, of my body being too fragile to live through it. The dream kept trying really hard to be one of those frightening dreams that you wake up from screaming and grab your un-pregnant stomach in relief. But love kept changing it, overtaking it. Caleb was there, and he was frightened too but he had stayed by my side.

"You mean you haven't gotten a single ultrasound?" He asked, (the dream trying to frighten me again)

But I said, "No. We don't even know if it's a boy or a... girl." I paused because the reality hit me that we would actually  know our child soon, and I laughed out loud, my heart almost skipped a beat it was so happy. He began to mirror my happiness. Then the fear started to come again, fear of bearing the baby, and it began to overtake me but I felt my complete inability to change it and I didn't panic, I laid down for a moment and surrendered. I had to give up fighting and just believe that I had that power somewhere within myself.

We began talking again. In the dream we had just been fighting before all this, and I said to Caleb, "I'm so frightened right now. But... We get to have a baby...." His face started to light up and I was beginning to fill with this overwhelming sense of responsibility and joy. "I just... I just want to set all of that aside (the things we were fighting about), it doesn't matter to me anymore, I just wanna focus our energy on being good parents." The reality that we would actually be parents was too much, when I said the word, the dream escalated with love and we began laughing, Caleb's face became exultantly happy, and I fell over on my side and laughed from the excitement and fear and love and responsibility till I cried.

That's when I woke up, and grabbed my stomach to see if it was flat. I was relieved, but not in that desperate, horrified way. I realized, I would have done it, I would have lived that life my dream created. I thought, this is why people eventually choose to have children, so that they can feel that, and more. I learned that there's enough love in me that I will overcome my rebellious aversion to the idea of children, someday.