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.  

3. Thalassa

The raging current inside her refused to be tamed by anyone other than an equal. The white sprays of water that came off the tops of her waves found their outlet out of her eyes. Those that saw them were scared away, afraid of the corrosion that almost always followed. The only one she had met that could weather her storm was destined to be destroyed by her. As stoic and solid as a mighty cliff face, he was there to let her crash into him time and time again. His only punishment was that he would ever so slowly fall apart, until one day when she calmed down and he was nothing but an empty shell of his former self. They both knew this, and yet they couldn’t do anything to stop it.  

2.

Why am I such a lover girl? Why do I have so much love to give, but no one to accept it? I serve my heart on a silver platter with my feelings as a garnish, only for it to be returned to the kitchen untouched. The chef stares at the returned, cooled and deflated cor, only to agree with the customer that it is not good enough to consume. How many more times can I carve my heart out of my chest before I have no more blood left to restart it when it eventually returns unchosen? I don’t have much left to give.  

1.

The calls of the birds. The songs of nature pull me from slumber, stealing me away from your warm embrace. The cricks and cracks of mother nature remind me that we are all on one journey that will end just as cruelly as it began. As much as I am afraid of man, the birds and faeries of the forest are afraid of me. It feels like home, however, being in the wild wonderland. The primal feeling of being free calls to me within my life as a slave to the expectations of the bricks and mortar jail. The wind rushing through my hair, the dirt underneath my toes, the bark of the trees beneath my fingertips. I feel my blood calling to those who have come before, and to those that could teach me many things about the way of life. A fire not just to keep me warm, but also to see it for what it truly is, a force of nature. So destructive but yet so beautiful at the same time. Like Alice in Wonderland but I’m Alice and the Wonderland is the Australian outback.