floating weightless
I watch two lifeguards
change places, ground to tower
first
all bodies counted
all bodies noticed
all bodies
mine has waited
years upon years
for me to notice
belly breath
for me to return
heart filled
welcome back
we say
together
reunited
it can look selfish
this way I’m living
looking for love
through a camera lens
through the way my thighs move when I dance
through the way my chest rises when I sing
but it’s survival
like the lone daffodil blooming in January
a waning moon at dawn
the first dandelion puff
the cluster of fuzzy buds on the bare peach tree
we are all looking
in Winter
in all Winters
it lays dormant inside
domed darkness
you walk past it looking nowhere
anywhere, but not there
never there
yet it goes still
growing bedrock feral
mushroom bellied
lichen ferocious
trapping pain web-like
crackling like ice
smelling like bruised desperation
like untouched skin
like hot ash scattered by eroded winds
you don’t need to see
to feel
you walk faster looking nowhere
anywhere, but not there
never there
yet it goes still
like tides
like movement
Spring saplings tap-dancing
on rooted tiptoes
daffodils issuing battle cries
thrusting spears upward
dandelion puffs cooing
dreaming light again
there’s a light somewhere
he says
your nested winds sigh
your meadow grasses rustle
your waters ripple gently
just a bit longer
you tell your forest
hold tight
When children are small you can sprinkle nutritional yeast on millet and tell them it’s fairy dust. With a word, it becomes so. Such is the power of language. What if we could do the same with our dreams? Here’s a poem and flash fiction rambling on about such things. Let me know what you think.
perched on a purple wall
staring at my sleeping child
what do you see shadow bird?
do you see. see like me?
my grandfather became cloud
grandmother became butterfly.
I sit in her chair. I sing with his voice.
what will be left for her when I, transform?
maybe I become you.
maybe I watch from a wall.
flying with one word.
staying with another. word.
dream me alive. over and over and over.
clove and nutmeg. owl spreading wings.
forest hears, nothing.
another dream
One night during a dream of chaos and war a woman gives birth to a baby with hair the color of fresh snow. The baby blinks at the woman with eyes as green as ancient ferns and coos like a dove. What if instead of forgetting the baby when she woke the woman decides to name her Mabel and she becomes as real as coffee.
The woman dresses the dream baby in clothes the color of fresh marigolds and wears her close to her chest in a carrier woven of the softest wool. She takes the baby out into the rain and her laugh becomes lightning. The world sparks around them and glows brighter.
The plants in the woman’s house grow with the baby—greener and taller, greener and taller until the woman is forced to cut through them with a large knife, like an explorer in a jungle. She and the baby laugh at the silliness of it as birds make nests in her living room and a family of rabbits discovers the perfect place to live within her closet.
They spend most days outdoors so Mabel can make the grass thicker, the trees taller, and the flowers bolder. The neighbors don’t know what’s making their gardens grow and the woman decides not to tell them. Not everyone believes as strongly as she does and she fears their disbelief will pull the child away.
When Mabel starts walking the woman takes her outside in the middle of the night and upon seeing the full moon the child begins to sing. The tiny lilting notes cause the stars to dance and the moon to move closer and closer to the Earth. The woman knows this won’t go unnoticed and will have terrible consequences, but she hesitates to act because love defies logic and gravity. Love defies most things.
Mabel however makes the choice for her, wiggling out of her grasp and floating toward the moon. The baby with hair as white as snow returns back into the dream where she was born and the woman walks home alone. Her house feels different but she smiles the same because Mabel is as real as coffee and her physical absence changes nothing. She wraps herself in wool and dream walks to visit her child.
Such is the power of language. And love.
It’s the 8th day of the New Year and I’m behind. Behind in responding to comments. Behind in writing blog posts. Behind in reading blog posts. My Christmas decorations are still happily shining and my sink is full of dishes.
I share this because there’s a tendency this time of year to feel like you have to hit the ground running. January has to be YOUR month to get all the things done and to set into motion all the ways you wish to make your life better. It’s all a lie. Like so many untruths we tell ourselves, it’s just another example of perfectionism making us miserable.
Don’t let it.
I’ve chosen Movement as my word of the year. Any forward momentum toward my goals will be considered a success. No, I’ve not done much blogging, but I did take a trip to Tahoe and my photography heart got to dance in the snow. No, I’ve not done much cleaning of my house, but I’ve written a poem and short story in my journal every day this year so far. Movement. Like water over stones. It all matters.
If you’ve been around here a minute, you’ll know I have a deep love for David Bowie. Today would be his 77th birthday and last night I dreamed I was in his Lazarus music video. I was under the bed reaching my hand out to him. I woke and wrote this poem and a small flash fiction in his honor. I hope you enjoy them. They aren’t what I had planned to post but I’m learning to let my creativity go where it wants to.
Movement.
shadow fingertips
touch feather blankets
flutter free
like bluebirds racing sunlight
like bare branches in a breeze
like tomorrows that don’t come
it’s just like you to leave us
quick as lightning
moonman mornings
starlight singings
fly free toward me
I don’t want him to call me his bluebird one last time, although he does it anyway in a raspy voice I barely recognize. It matters to him, but I refuse sentimentality. I suppose it’s my way of fighting back. I know he understands.
“Time loops around,” I whisper when his heart stops.
Someone screams. Someone else runs to tell the people waiting on the mountain. Or maybe nobody is here at all except me. I wipe his eyes with the damp hem of my dress. I clean his face of tears, but the ones on my face are dry now.
He’s not gone, I yell to those wailing and screaming, but maybe the certainty he gave me at the end was only for me. He was fond of parting gifts. A lifetime of moon whispering, hip swaying, star gazing, and half-smiles don’t disappear. Not fully.
He’s writing everything down in a notebook beside the river while I wade up to my knees in the cool lapping water. Geese loudly scream out for attention, but I don’t take my eyes off his pen. Rocks beneath my toes are covered in slimy moss and they sing to me. The sky above is as blue as his right eye, maybe not even as blue as that. Clouds find a way to shift. Moving toward him, like we all do. Like I want to do right now.
Our years have now become days. We change nothing. We do nothing different. For certainty and love requires surrender to the forces of nature. A deer walks into the water and stands near me drinking loudly. Its side constricts and contracts—a life that does not care who we are because we are just like it. One who drinks. One who moves. One who watches the sky and feels the earth.
The pen stops and he looks at me over his notebook and perhaps he’s smiling. I can’t tell because the sun has burst through the dancing clouds and turned him into a being a light. “Free,” I think I hear him say, and just like the bluebird he takes flight. His wings sound like music.
*All photos were taken and edited by me.
speaking stories of us into water
whispers become wanderings
look outward, lean inward
watch raindrops race time
square windowpanes, falling
pooled hope, softened palms
say something about rum rivers
while I drink old coffee
touch lace lines, anywhere
forgive becomes forgotten
think blankets, thick fog
old birds underneath
hidden
forward, backward, pretend
time is the same
warmth seeks warmth
close becomes closer
find me
sitting across me
hands breathing fire
you burn sunflowers
into moonless shadows
remember
touch inky waves
scream amber light
open every sunroof
rotate back to you
For anyone struggling right now, but especially Cin.
shaking from pride or nerves
never can I tell
press wound
apply greater pressure
still don’t feel it
forget deep, give me soft
fault lines carved from neglect
don’t take much to shift
plates want to move
quakes mean I’m alive
velvet cheek pressing against me
pink lips sucking air
my body knows this
memory becomes language
speaking not words but sensations
primal swaying
songs of ancestors
tenderness blooms here
sweet milky breath
tiny fingers grasping shirt
seedling, daffodil drops, skyward
Mother Earth swells larger
willow trees dancing
petal skinned waters
paper cranes taking flight
you sigh
it becomes a smile
now a laugh
are you chasing winds?
riding swollen ocean waves?
smelling ancient ferns?
moonlight sings your name
sunshine whispers its secrets
lean into softness
stars remember everything
you will tell me someday
you will tell me
all of it
He had a picture of me
on his work desk. A boa
constrictor wrapped around
my neck. He’d say,
“She wasn’t even scared.”
His framed pride
didn’t match my fear,
so I pretended.
Not a snake charmer,
I learned to drink venom.
Walk through glass. Palms
up, always. Let me prove
how good I am, like sweet
orange trees. Climb. Take
cover beneath my limbs,
I’ll take all the blame. Sorry
for the storm, for freezing
pomegranate hearts. Orphan
without warmth—I know.
Look, watch me spin so
bright. Sing to the moon.
Ride through a rice field, kick
dust onto the snow-white
cranes. See me create starlight
babies with magical breath—
lean in. Smell them.
Part me.
Part you.
Us.
Branches. You see?
Beautiful are the buds
bearing your blue eyes.
Maybe you had to move
away. Once, no twice.
You needed to be further
from this mess; this me.
Further and further.
I see.
Neck, boa, constrict—
my words press like sap
pushing through bark.
Not fearless, but what
will too late feel
like when words sit stuck
inside. No, say it all. Look,
do you see? “She wasn’t even
scared.”
Bridgette Tales 