texas.

/

There are shifts. There are new spaces that feel important, sensations that soothe my frazzled synapses, textures that never before felt like my own. There are sounds-- birds that screech before a storm, the gentle hum of the washing machine-- that are part of the rhythm here. 

You are home,

You are home,

You are home,

They say. 

And little by little,

day by day,

I start to believe them

on the sixth day.

/

I'm alternating between terror and fury, trying to get words down on a page before they're ripped from my fingers, between anger and despair as I press those same fingers against my abdomen and think of all the women who now fear their wombs, forced to be strangers in their own bodies, at war with their very biology.

This is not the piece I wanted to write. This was meant to be a celebration, a tearing through of the fabric, a shattering of the ceiling, a rocket ship straight to the stars. 

This is the quicksand we feared when we were children--thick, alien, inescapable. A poison without an antidote. A slow, syrupy sinking sucking us right back into the soil. I can feel it wrapping itself around my ankles, calculated and cold as it creeps past my knees. 

The ground is slipping out from under us. May our faces stay turned upward, may our eyes stay fixed on the sky.

 

traveling.

/

I left the city this weekend. I left the city and let the grass curl between my toes and the bugs I'm desperately allergic to crawl across my thighs and dipped my sun-starved skin into a pool that was too cold and full of leaves and felt like heaven.

My heart was quiet there but my mind was racing, sprinting, relentlessly asking:

"isn't this better?"

I came back to Brooklyn and looked around. I felt myself tethered by the memories we've made here. I felt the lives that have yet to be conceived stirring inside me.

I asked them:

"my loves, where will we go?"

I listened. 

I sat across from one of the loves of my life at an empty restaurant and drank wine. I remembered that heartstrings are lengthy and resilient. 

I came home to you and curled my body against yours, our hearts full and quiet

and realized home will travel with us, wherever we go.