23.

Does a bird ever look into the night sky and imagine flying through the stars? Do crows and magpies look at the stars and wish to add their shiny things in the sky to their collections? Do lions and red pandas ever lie and sleep under the starts and winder how the sky changes from one giant light into millions of tiny ones? Does a cat ever watch a falling star and try to catch it? I wonder if any animals hold a curiosity for the night sky like any member of the human race does.

We hold such fascination with places and things that the majority of us will never be able to witness first hand. I wonder if it stems from us always wanting something that we can’t have. Or maybe it’s a collective sense of wonder and curiosity that grips us when we see something beautiful that we don’t understand. We see galaxies and planets all around us from our tiny corner of the universe and we wonder if we are alone.

But I wonder if anyone on this planets think the same. We cannot be alone. All of the universe and only us? Not likely.

I wonder if earth will see some travel in this lifetime. Cruise ships that take passages on scenic trips around Jupiters moons. Or flying back home to mars after a holiday to Io.

God it kills me that I am so small. Not even a dot on the map. I want to see it all. I want to see a start being born and dying in the same day. I am stuck on this planet until the day I die, my feet stuck in the mud like glue.

My planet is so beautiful, and the view of our galaxy is glorious, but I want more. I don’t want to just live and look up at the stars, I want to live amongst them.

22.

We are made of aether.

Out souls and bodies comprised of the fabric of the universe.

Stardust and the matter in between coursing through our veins.

We have been scared of our surrounding space since the dawn of time, but maybe we are only afraid of finding out too much of who we are.

But there is also a curiosity there, to find out what’s beyond our galaxy. A hunger for knowing that surrounds us.

But is it a hunger for knowledge, or a burning desire to return to where we all began?

The aether in our bodies answering the call from their brothers and sisters.

Our souls begging to be set free and join the others in the night sky.

I long to join them. To become one with aether and travel so far throughout the void that I am forgotten.

I want to feel the softness of the inly black sky wrap me up in its arms and carry me through infinite cycles of the moon.

21.

As I step outside to wander through the trails along the river, I am reminded of the joys during these early hours of the morning. Walking through the quiet streets I can see the early rays of the sun climbing higher and higher in the sky and slowly shining through the trees. There is no one else awake with me to experience the peacefulness with. 

I don’t feel alone because of it, if anything I am relishing being the only one experiencing this secret little world.

I feel special. I am the only one to share secrets with the trees and the birds. As I leave the path and descend down the grass to teach the trails, I leave my world behind and I feel myself entering the world of nature. I can hear crickets chirping. Magpies singing. Ducks quacking and playing in the water. As I follow the trail that leads me nowhere and everywhere, I can smell the early morning dew on the grass. I cannot explain the smell in a way that does it justice, but it smells like hope, new beginnings, and a certain amount of whimsy that makes me want to run away and live in the woods for the rest of time. I can see the sun shining through the most and low hanging clouds, creating a haze of beauty over the water.

I stand for a few minutes watching insects flit over the rivers surface, the ducks swimming lazily in a group around them. The weeping willows lowest leaves just dangling in the water, moving ever so slightly in the breeze. As I sit amongst the flowers and grass that live on the banks of the river, I am sitting in a sense of peace that I have felt nowhere else before. How did we use to live and thrive between the trees and the earth, to then move on to concrete jails that are killing our sense of primalness?

I don’t want this to be my secret world within my real one. I want it to be my whole world.

As I step off the path that lets me imagine back onto the one that takes my magic away, I whisper my goodbyes to those watching me leave.

I tell them that I’ll be back.

They have a hard time believing me.

20.

Humanity has been in love with the stars for millions of years. Generations using the constellations to guide them home and lead them on their travels.

Some just admiring their beauty, some worshipping them and having them oversee their rituals bathed in moonlight.

The twinkling and flickering of the little against lights against the velvet black of space. From earth they’re so beautiful. We are enamoured with them.

But what we don’t see is that the stars are dying.

That the beauty they display is their combustion. We are so far away that by the time we witness their funeral, they are long gone.

We seem to have a habit with finding beauty in death.

We place flowers in our homes after cutting them from their home plant, all because we liked the way they looked. People falling in love with someone’s art once they’ve passed on and only doing so because of their death. Taxidermy and the preservation of insects.

Showcasing their collections to any visitors in their home.

Or finding beauty and joy from ones life once they have left this world.

Is it morbid of us to fall into this pattern? Or is it a testament to the human race that in grief and death we can find beauty?

19.

For thousands of years humans have been repurposing the skeletons of trees and rocks to further our developing world. Cutting down living things older than we can imagine, skinning their bark to fuel our fires and using their bones to furnish our homes.

When you sit on a wooden chair at a wooden table, you do not think of the life that the tree had before it met its end. How old was it? What forrest did it stand in? What did it witness in this world before if was cut down? Do we sit upon the bones of a child? Or do we sit upon one that stood for hundreds of years and witnessed the comings and goings of our ancestors over generations?

Are we aware that we have created a living graveyard that does not receive the mourning it deserves? I wonder if they tell tales of the murderers with four limbs that invaded their forests and have never left. Everyday we take advantage of and use scraps of their corpses with no second thought. But trees are not the only living kingdom that we use the bones and flesh of.

Rocks we cleave open to examine what lays inside. Or in the days of old, used for weaponry. Or for the pavement we walk on, parading back and forth over the cut, sanded and shaped flesh that we take advantage of. Or the houses and castles that were built upon the thousands of broken bones from previously beautiful structures of nature, crafted over centuries. It seems that anything in this world has a harrowed relationship with the human race.

We also brew and drink tea with the dry and grounded skin of flowers that grow wild across our meadows. Or eat their bodies as part of a home cure for various ailments. Even in a salad just for beauty and fun. The flowers and plants sometimes become encased within a welcoming stone set. Giving them the ability to slow their descent into the nest life. The stones giving them a new form of life. Preserving them for millennium, letting is know that they all came before us. We are nothing to them. Small specks of life scattered throughout space and time.

We are constantly reminded of how short our lifespans on this earth are by the rings of age we find by cutting a once glorious tree in half. The more rings we find, the more significant we become. Akin to the wrinkled and weathered skin of our elders, the rings in a trees trunk can show is so much. The strength and ability to grow in these climates. To escape the clutches of humanities greed for oh so many years.

We don’t treat our elders that we, so how come we treat natures elders this way?

18.

Everyone’s afraid of Death, and that’s maybe why he’s so lonely. There is one however, that looked Death in the face and wasn’t scared by what lay there. One look, that’s all it took to stop Death in his tracks and make him forget what it was he came to collect. She met his eyes with her own and within them Death could see sparks of light that rivalled the stars in the sky. But deeper than that he noticed a seed of loneliness that he’d never seen in any person of the living.

It matched his own.

She lowered her eyes after a second, mumbled an apology for getting in his way and continued on her way. And he let her go. instead of collecting, he simply followed her on her journey. She didn’t mind. She felt his presence behind her, but instead of feeling the usual panic of knowing someone is following you in the dark, she felt comforted. So she slowed her stop and allowed him to walk beside her. It was a strange concept for them both to grasp, but neither wanted to go back to walking alone. They spent this time together for many years. Never talking, never anything more than a presence at each other’s side. Death left to collect the world’s losses every so often, but he always came back to her. Occasionally he would bring her back gifts. Nothing fancy, nothing special. But Death did not know the concept of friendship, he had never had someone to share the world with. He had seen the living leave items and flowers n the graves of those that he’d collected and so he assumed that dead flowers were normal. She never showed it enough but she appreciated everything that Death brought her.

No one had ever cared enough to bring her gifts before.

She had never liked fresh flowers anyway, they never lasted as long as you wanted them to. As the years got older. so did their friendship. Slowly, Death began noticing his only friend was ageing. He had seen the grief of the living steep into their lives and he had never fully understood why it was such a loss for them. Until now. Over time, he had done what he could to help her live as comfortably as she had made him feel. Keeping her warm with a gentle breeze when she was walking home in the winter. Pushing the wind under her feet to help her walk when her feet got too heavy for her to lift alone. Scaring those that made her life harder than it already was with the threat of an early trip to their grave. Just even lending her his presence for when she was in her lowest moments and she wanted Death to complete the job he couldn’t do from all those years ago. But Death had begun to notice a change in his only friend. It was subtle at first, but the stars in her eyes had begun to shine like supernovas. And slowly, ever so slowly, the single spark of loneliness that had once lived in her eyes began folding in on itself. Until one day it disappeared completely. Death had not known it possible to recover from whatever lay in both of their souls. Death had not even known that he possessed the humanity to feel such things, but no one had ever been there to show him that he could. He was hateful, in a way, that he had been allowed to exist within a friendship. He had the rest of time now to sit with the revelations of all that she had shown him. But he was also grateful that he had been able to experience the comfort of a human friendship. His infinite existence between this world and the void had never offered him any comfort, destined to be alone and ferrying the lost souls between the two planes as punishment for an act that he never remembers committing.

She knew that her end was almost upon her. She knew soon that she could not cheat her friend out of his job forever. She knew that he still had no choice but to complete the task he had started all those years ago. She could live for 20 lifetimes and still never show enough gratitude to the bringer of death for giving her a reason to live.

And so the day came.

For the first time, Death did not want to collect. The ability to have felt love for the friendship and opened the flood gates for other human emotions to seep into his soul. He felt selfish. He wanted to keep her at his side so that he would not have to experience the loss he had witnessed so many times before alone. But Death found himself incapable of being selfish. He could not punish the one who had taught him so much. And so they found themselves back standing in the same spot as they had been so long ago. She could barely hold it together as she stared at her feet on the pavement. Death just stared as silently and as still as he always did, but what she could not see was the utter regret and sadness that was coursing through him. Neither had ever spoken a word to each other, and neither felt like now was the time to start. But finally, and for one last time, she raised her eyes to his and he could understand everything that was being conveyed through her eyes. And she could see that his eyes were mirroring her own. She was looking at her the best friend she had ever had, and instead of feeling sad she only felt content. That she had been allowed to experience some happiness in this lifetime.

She nodded at Death. One single and slow nod of understanding. Death gave one back, the nod offering all that needed to be said.

And so Death caught her final breath in this world and gently collected the most beautiful soul he had ever laid eyes on.

17.

There is a never-ending misty field that sits upon its own plane beyond the world of the living. There are no grave stones, but there doesn’t need to be. The mourning can be felt across the worlds. Sometimes a light shines upon the field and snakes its way through the mist in such a hauntingly beautiful way that it is easy to forget what is beneath the soil. None of the graves receive visitors. Who would want to? But sometimes a lone flower blooms upon a patch of disturbed soil. Each flower is all the mourning a corpse will receive, a thought in remembrance from the world of the living. Some graves never have a flower bloom upon their soil, others receive a never ending assortment.

No one thinks twice about where their hopes and dreams go & lie to rest when they’re no longer being kept alive by hope. Each dream that finds itself in the graveyard mourns for a life they could’ve lived.

But they never get angry.

They understnad that they are not always attainable, nor are they always wanted enough to be made real. But sometimes, every so often, a dream will find itself plucked from their resting place & settle into the mind of another. Given the opportunity for a chance to finally come alive.

The melancholy felt by the ones left behind seeping into the soul and reaching out to each other for comfort. But never jealous. They only wish that someone in the land of the living believed in themselves enough to bring their dreams back to life.

16.

She believed that she was only made to love others, and not to be loved herself.

Pouring her heart out to all those that cross her path.

But never expecting anything in return.

Loneliness walked beside her everyday of her life, like a cat that has chosen the one they wish to follow.

Swirling around her feet for comfort with every step she takes in life.

But she doesn’t mind. She knows she wants more but she is content being the one to give love and compassion to others who she thinks deserves it more.

How her soul can feel so empty yet spill so much love for anyone other than herself, she did not know.

Yet she never complained.

She had become used to it, the reality of never receiving the kind of love that she gives to others.

Loneliness saw this and took pity on her. It knew how draining it was to walk through life shouldering your own burdens.

She often thought of a quote from a book, “we accept the love we think we deserve”. And she had come to accept any morsel of love that anyone threw at her.

But she never let it break her.

Her soul always somehow remained lit with a small flame that connected her to the souls of other exactly like her across the universe.

They talk about the unbreakable human spirit. They do not know that she is that saying personified.

She had no idea and no one to tell her, but although she was waling alone in her own life, she wasn’t walking alone in this time.

She would keep loving until she joined all the other lovers in the dirt.

Rotting and falling into each other until they are called upon again to rejoin the world that will never see them as enough.

15.

We’re always thinking that nothing is consistent over the course of out lives, that nothing stays the same for too long.

But we’re wrong. There is one that is consistent and always watching throughout all our lives.

We share a silent observer that is always there to keep us company.

The moon watched over me as I was born.

She watched over as generation upon generation of my ancestors were born.

I wonder if she notices how similar or different I am to those that came before me.

She was watching as I slept so peacefully after my first day of school.

She oversaw my first heartbreak and offered the comfort of her beauty to show me that there is still good in this world.

The first time I got drunk she laughed with compassion as I discovered the effects of alcohol & she held my hand as I passed into the dreamscape.

So proudly she stood against the blanket of stars on all the nights I sat and observed her quietly when she was at her fullest.

When I was learning how the ebbs and flows of sadness could effect my mental health, she would silently watch me from her throne above to make sure I stayed on this plane for the full amount of my allotted time.

It has been the same moon all this time. The same moon watching me grow, struggle, love, thrive, laugh, and cry.

And it has taken me 23 years to realise it.

When I have been languishing & hollow, complaining and shouting to the world that I am lonely, I have been unknowingly insulting my caretaker.

I have been laid bare before her my whole life, and I will continue to be for the rest of my days.

She does this for all of us, all the miserable souls on this planet that are unaware of what she does for us.

We are not worthy of her love, we haven’t been for hundreds of years.

Her shining brilliance guiding us in the night through winding country lanes and city streets.

Guiding our ancestors through forests and fields as they hunted to put food on the family table.

Those of us who knew who our guardian was, offering up thanks and love to her once a month when she was shining at her brightest. They knew exactly what to do.

When did we lose this art of worship?

When did we collectively ad subconsciously decide that we no longer were humble enough to thank the one who looks after us?

When did we decide that we were too good for her?

I was the moon to know that she is ever so loved by so many on this planet.

I want her to know that there are still some in this universe that wish to find the lost knowledge needed to be able to thank her properly.

I want & need the moon to know that she is so so beautiful and provides so much joy and reason to live for so many.

She will stay watching over the earth for millennia to come, and I can only hope that our future selves can once again learn to appreciate and love the moon like I do.

14.

Everyone is afraid of the slinky feeling that arrives in the night and twists itself around your heart. Farming its poison into your blood stream as it travels up into your brain. It starts just as a shadow of a doubt, giving you the slight feeling of discomfort. From there it twists and pulls your emotions out of place. It whispered in your ear little lies that make you unsure of your own judgment.

This shadow, this tiny and insignificant shadow has brought down kingdoms, pulled apart families and divided so many relationships both platonic and romantic. And there is no weapon for us to use to defend ourselves against this silent destroyer. We can do all we can to put our trust into our decisions, but this shadow is as patient as the ocean.

It wants.

It sits and waits, coiled around our hearts, waiting and eroding until it makes a move on our emotions. It can control even the most peaceful among us, influencing one small decision at a time until it is a powerful enough to go for the kill. What do I do?

The slimey feeling it leaves behind is tainted with betrayal and shame. Every time it leaves my body, I make an oath to my heart and emotions that it won’t affect me again.

But I always break my oath. I can’t help it.

How?

How can this one feeling have the power to bring down civilisations? How can this one emotion overrule all the others and drive us to commit acts we know we shouldn’t? Sometimes it crashes over us like a dark wave in a storm, shaking and dislodging everything in its path. Other times it floats down to us like a leaf falling off a branch. Should we be embracing it? Is it a normal emotion that over time we have come to exclude? Or has it slowly developed over the millennia as its hinger for chaos grew?

Sometimes we attract the shadow ourselves. Sometimes it is justified that we listen to the slithery shadow that whips around our hair to whisper in our ears. Maybe this is why we can never overcome it, because there are those rare occasions that the terrible gut feeling is right.

13.

The ocean is as mysterious as she is untameable. I think she’s one of the most beautiful entities of destruction this earth has to offer. She is always moving, always changing. Following the moons pull, the two work together in a harmony that is only shared between two loves who can never be together. She is so beautiful, sometimes so calm on the surface but dealing with a raging torrent to those below. She’s patient in her revenge to those that cross her, eroding slowly away over hundreds of years. Her destruction leaving beauty and chaos in her wake. The ocean never stops. Maybe she’s like us and can never bare to be in once place for too long. Maybe she’s not happy yet, and one day she finds whatever she has been searching for and she’ll fall still and silent. Or what if the ocean’s been unable to calm the raging tide of revenge and that is why people say they can hear the seaside filled with her constant raging? Her tides getting closer and closer to shore but never quite reaching their destination before getting pulled back to her great expanse by her lover in the sky. Constant chaos and unpredictability. It is easy to see why she’s so loved across the universe. But while she sits in her rage, she also nurtures. She hosts a whole universe beneath her waves. A self-sustaining world that would suffer without her existence. Maybe she is constantly shifting for those she keeps alive. One can never fully know or understand her secrets. By the time you get even slightly close, she has already moved on.

The ocean feels a lot like my mind, the never settling and constant chaos. The consistent rolling waves that mimic the rise and fall of emotions. Eroding away just the same, ever so slowly overtime but still constantly destructive.

12.

What does it mean to be depraved?

Am I depraved in my words and desires? The things I have done?

How can I explain that when I die I want all of my loved ones to receive a bone so that I’m always with them?

Or that I would carry my loves blood on a chain around my neck for no other reason than wanting to always be close to them.

Is it always outrageous to acknowledge that to be as close as possible to someone by sharing their skin that it would be a privilege?

Depraved or not, I would stake myself to the ground to stay in place if a friend asked me to. Rooted in place as they grow with trees and fly into the sun.

Or that I would carve out my organs for them while I was still living if it was the difference between life and death for them, even if it killed me in the process.

Suppose it’s possible to love someone so much, where is the line?

Is it before or after presenting your heart on a silver platter alongside a knife and asking them to cut you open so they can see how much space they take in it?

But what about depravity when it comes to ones self? And not on their actions towards those that would walk across knives for?

What makes ones soul depraved when alone in the world?

Is that even possible as long as the acts and choices are not downright wrong?

If I enjoy pain as a way to let my emotions bleed to the floor an leave my body but not enough to leave me decaying in the earth, is that depraved? Or just not quite right?

What if I just enjoy a little bit of pain in all aspects of my life?

How and why is that so bad? Just because it may not be a shared sentiment with the majority of souls on this planet, it should not mean that it is looked down upon unless it is inherently evil?

I suppose depravity can be used to describe anything that is fun.

11.

Our bodies were made to decay.

We are born with systems that have a finite span of life with no clue on how long our bodies will allow us to live. As children, our bones are strong enough to allow us to test the lengths that we can go to before we break. As teenagers, we live fast and reckless with the time and bodies we've been given with no thought on the consequences.

If you think too much, you’ll only ruin the one chance at life that you’ve been granted. It is only when our bones start creaking that you live in regret of what could’ve been. The inability to run with the birds or jump for the stars starts to ground us before we are ready.

Our bodies keeping our feet planted for long enough that the weeds can spring from the ground and root us into place. Or those that live in regret of all the little things they could not achieve in their short time on this earth. Like flying a kit or ice skating. Some never get the option to even try, being forced to work their lives away so that they’re allowed to survive. Or those whose bodies who have betrayed them and stolen the ability to live without assistance.

It is confusing, one can assume, or even scary to know, that one day your body and mind will start betraying you instead of serving you. All those years lived, memories carefully stored away and yet one day they might start slipping away with no reason why. What is the point in even making these memories if they will just be forgotten? They’ll join the millions of other dead hopes and dreams of the human race, swirling around the universe waiting for someone else to give them life.

We are all terrified of growing old, all of us with different reasons why. What if we lose who we fought so hard to become? What if we have to rely on others to help us live with simple tasks such as eating or looking after ourselves? What if we reach a certain age and despise ourselves for not having lived more when we were young? What if we never reach old age? And is it better to grow old and weary alone of with one who you have spent your whole life loving?

Humans are designed to love, with most finding the other half of their soul upon this earth. They spend decades growing, living loving and hating them, some making families and securing the survival of their bloodline. But what happens when the darkness and the earth claims one half of that whole? How can one continue to live in a world that stole their reason to wake up in the morning? How does one adjust to living for one when they have spent so many years living for two? 

There is always the fear that you won’t go first, that you’ll have to shoulder the grief alone until your own body decides when it is time to join them in the darkness. Or the fear that you shall be the one to go first. That you’ll cease to breathe with the knowledge that you are leaving your soulmate to deal with their pain alone. For some, the thought of this pain is too much that they lock their hearts away in a tote and refuse to open the gates again. They know away the key because they deem it easier to live within their own company, than risk opening their heart to someone and giving them the power to break it. We all know that our bodies decaying is inevitable, yet we all fear it happening to us. Some even get to extreme lengths to halt the efforts of ages, but in the end it always catches up to them.

Why? Why have we stayed away from the acceptance of privilege around growing old, and instead become fearful of it? Maybe one day we’ll find the answer, but I fear we will all be lost in the wind when that day comes.

10.

How cruel the universe is to allow the wind to fall in love with a mortal. Not only is it an unrequited love, but the wind goes unseen in its acts of romance. He swirls longingly around her hair and face every time she leaves her house. He waits by her front door daily for her to open it, always assisting her by gently blowing it inwards. He follows her and always makes sure her hair is blowing away from her face so that all can see her beauty.

His breeze capturing her perfume and taking it on his back he carries it around the city. The sweetness of her being on the tip of the nose for all those in the city. Never able to touch her, he settles for creating a barrier around her so that she cannot be touched by anyone else. He gets angry sometimes, I suppose, that he cannot even approach her. He cannot help it. He knows it’s wrong, letting his anger manifest in gales so strong that the trees become victims of his wrath. But he also knows that she loves the storm. The rain battering against her windows with her wind swirling around the streets and trees with a ferocity that demands attention. If she dares venture into the open on those days, he makes sure to send a zephyr into the rains path so that she can be kissed by proxy.

But he always calms down. And when he does he circles and whips around her torso in apology. He swirls under her feet to cushion her steps and helps her along to her destination. Acts of service, that’s all he can offer in this world. Always moving unseen, his acts of love come easily to him and he never has to think twice about it.

As the years passed, his cycle of love never never wavered until the day she lay on her death bed. He knew this day had been coming, he had been watching the cruel joke of life take its toll for millennia. He could tell when her last breath was coming as he always carried them off to live in the sky forever. The air was still the day she was able to take her last breath. And he was slowly swirling around her hair, almost like her was stroking her hair in farewell. As she inhaled his air for one last time on this earth, she whispered two words that couldn’t be heard by anyone else other than who she intended them for.

“Thank you”

Her exhale had barely passed her lips before he swooped down and shouldered the words on the back of his breeze. These words were not to be swept into the sky to join the others. They were to be kept with him for the rest of time.

9.

Let us love cataclysmically.

I want to burn so bright that we’re mistaken for the birth of a new star. I don’t care how long we burn for, as long as we both give it our everything.

As much as I wish for a love to last across lifetimes,

I crave a love that will be told as a story of divinity.

We may crash & burn, completely failing in our duty to live through it, but god did we burn bright before we crashed. Much like Icarus we was having the time of his life before his wings melted, we enjoy the thrill of the high before we fall.

We may fail, our match may burn out before we are ready, but I want it to be a love so intense that I am left questioning my existence in this world.

Let us take all the risks.

Let us go all in and all out together right from the start.

Let us be so unhealthy in our love together that our friends worry about out wellbeing.

Wrapped up in each other, we sacrifice our life force to burn as twin flames.

Oh what an experience you are to love.

8.

Without our bodies giving us life, we would just be a consciousness floating around in the dark. They provide us with limbs to be able to run and jump in joy. With eyes and ears to be able to hear and see the beauty of this world.

So warm and full of life.

But if they are giving us the ability to live a life high up in the clouds, why don’t we worship them more often? Why aren;t we laying down offering daily so that they keep providing us their divinity? We house our own temple. Within us there lives an entity that is higher than the gods themselves.

We are the closest we will get to divinity in this lifetime, but we often forget this.

We treat our bodies like secondary vessels deemed not worthy of being seen. We judge, hide, betray, poke and destroy the very things that allows us to stay alive on this plane of existence. We shame ourselves for not looking like someone else’s temple, when we know that each temple is different and serves a different purpose.

But our bodies say nothing. The being within continues to work for us timelessly, even though we are ungrateful. It’s no wonder the gods look upon us with such disdain when we treat out own personal temples in such a terrible way.

Long ago we lost the art of appreciation for true beauty, mainly that of ourselves. We are alive, we are living we are able to love and we are able to exist. How is that ever not beautiful? We used to understand as a collective religion, that beauty differs from temple to temple.

There’s a certain softness to be admired on a female body. That every woman and man deserve to be loved. That each temple is glorious in their own way. Appreciation of our own divinity has been lost for a very long time, but I am on a quest to find mine again.

I have a lot to make up for, I haven’t visited my temple in a very long time. She’s been neglected an deserted for no other reason that a lack of faith rooted deeply in fear and self loathing. When exactly I lost my faith I don’t know, but I do know that a pilgrimage is needed for me to make it up to her for taking care of me all these years when I know I haven’t deserved it. I think she’s like me, yearning to be appreciated and seen, and not making it anyone else’s issue but her own.

It makes sense I suppose, that we are one and the same. Goddess and disciple, bound to the same fate. We cannot escape I, however most of us still end up trying. I suppose it’s interesting that we will spend days and years praying to be allowed to worship anothers temple, but still we refuse to worship at our own altar.

Bring me back. Bring back my faith and show me how to appreciate you again.

7.

I munch on my words as I speak. 

I want to feel every syllable roll around my mouth before I spit them out. 

I need to feel the weight of each word before I spit it out.  

Roll them around my mouth so I can get a taste before you do. 

Sometimes the words are so sweet that I end up swallowing them instead, 

Sliding down my throat like hot honey. 

I can’t help it if I want to keep this sweetness inside of me.  

I think sometimes, though, I chew on the syllables too much, 

The gristle gets stuck between my teeth & I can’t tell the letters from the space in between them. 

I try to pry it out with my tongue, but I am almost always unsuccessful.  

Maybe it’s the words way of not wanting to leave the comfort of my mouth 

Maybe they know that staying where they are is the better option.  

All I know is that I’ve always been one to eat enough, so what does that say about my words? 

6.

Sometimes it feels like I’m watching my friends from behind a glass window. I treasure them beyond any gemstone & yet it feels like I am only fools gold to them. 

Why? 

Why am I always so alone? 

I am not meant to be alone.  

I can be, I have to be. 

But I crave love & light with those that I love. 

I am hopeless for my friends.  

5.

I wonder what it’s like to be a flower. To feel your roots grow down into the earth and forever rooting you into place. Twisting the ends around other roots and pieces of dirt until you’re holding on so tight that they have to keep growing. I wonder what it feels like to push through the surface of the soil for the first time and feel the kiss of the sun on your newly grown stem.  

I wonder what it feels like to grow a centimetre day by day and to slowly have my arms grow out and stretch wide across the earth. Each new arm bringing an opportunity of shade for the insects below that travel over the dirt in a hunt for food and shelter. At the end of each arm brings promise of a new bid of life that is waiting to flower with its brothers and sisters when the time is right. 

I wonder what it feels like to finally reach the day where you have grown to your tallest and most majestic heights where you finally are ready to show the world the secret beauty that you’ve been working on in the long months that you’ve been growing. I wonder what it feels like to finally open all the buds along your arms and push out the many wide petals that you’ve been hiding in their wombs of leaves. To stretch high up towards the blazing orb in the sky that fuels their growth and beauty in this world. I wonder what it feels like to have bees & other insects use your blood as a food source. To suck the marrow out of your core $ leave behind a faint memory of thanks from their touch. To know that you are playing your own special part in this world.  

I wonder what it feels like to feel the wind rippling through your petals on a warm summer's night. Or the feeling of rain on your leaves during an autumn shower. Or during a winter storm that blows a strong gale, yet you know you’re not going anywhere thanks to the roots that have stayed strong deep since day one. Or I wonder how it feels to come to the end of a life cycle and feel each of your petals slowly die and fall to the ground below. To have the womb of the bud grow back around all that’s left once all the last petals have fallen. I wonder if the new buds ever remember the life of the ones that came before. Each cycle having been the exact same but also oh so different at the same time. Do they hold a tiny fragment of bone from all their ancestors inside the bud? Whatever it is, I wonder what it’s like to be tall, strong, proud & beautiful in a garden filled with others exactly like me. 

I wonder what it’s like to be looked at in admiration for my beauty by those that were just happy to look. To have a series of onlookers all the way through my lifetime & love every stage of my growth. Do flowers know what colour they will bloom before their buds open for the first time? Do they get a choice in the matter? I wonder if flowers know how much joy they bring everyone who feasts their eyes upon their beauty. I wonder if flowers know about the weeds that attempt to grow in their shadow. Do they feel the brush of the feral flower’s roots upon their own? Do they mind that another is trying to anchor themselves to their own hard grown roots?  

I wonder what it’s like to feel the pain of someone picking one of your arms to steal your beauty for themselves. Do they feel the disconnect of nerves from their body as their arm is ripped away? I wonder if they utter a silent scream for the gods every time someone wants to hold their beauty for themselves. Do they remember each arm that has been stolen from them as they regrow one its place? I wonder what it’s like to regrow an arm. To feel the growing pains once more of a fresh limb as a reminder of what was once there. To feel the loss of something and know that while the replacement will be just as pretty as the arm before, it’ll never be the same. I wonder if the flower remembers all that steal their beauty, and I wonder if they then refuse to show them their beauty again.  

4.

You remind me of a warm summers evening spent with friends on the beach.  

Of sun rays streaming through the leaves of trees in a forest,  

of the sky being painted by every shade of orange, purple and pink at sunset. 

Of fresh spring flowers blooming across the fields, filling the air with the sweetest of scents. 

You remind me of all the beauty in this world, 

Like the lakes that are surrounded by weeping willows, 

Of the brightest stars shining on a clear winter night surrounded by the planets.  

By saying this into the mirror I hope I can believe it.