misplaced mama

I stumble into life everyday.  

I wake up with leftover ash covering my skin like a gown  from the ceremonial fire that I was at somewhere before I opened my eyes and I brush it off with disregard.  My thighs ache from the ritualist dance that must have taken over my limbs and there are burn marks on my ass from getting too close to the flames.  The back of my head has seven dreadlocks by getting dragged around by my ankles.

I stumble and then surrender to the fall and just as I am about to get slammed the wind catches me and I ride the air waves, believing they will carry me until my own wings grow. This morning I am pissed my dreams force me to into the real world and I have somewhere to be at a certain time and only one sock left in the drawer  There is no moment worth casting aside as just another annoyance, but I do over and over again.  There is no process that can be avoided, no journey that is not worth it’s weight in gold.  Yet I curse this one.  There is nothing more important than a first breath [each breath is always a first breath], yet I hold mine religiously.  There is nothing more grand than our last breath [each one can always be the last] and I am still scared shitless to die.  I stand in my closet ignoring screams from bathroom (someone needs toilet paper) and the kitchen (someone wants vitamins) I stand there wondering what would look good atop a pair of pinstrip pants, what would look good without a bra because my only one is missing.  There was nothing that looked good.  Topless,  rushing around to investigate what might live in the the dirty piles on the floor saying motherfucking laundry under my breath about 25 times,  sure that the construction workers from across the street could see me.  In front of the huge class window, I was a little grossed out and a little turned on.  And there it was.  Magic.  Nothing is no more or no less than it.   I can’t cast away even the most simpliest of days as ordinary.  My story is magic.  So is yours. Tell it.  Don’t just write it, though.  Live it. 

***

I had to write something about eating placentas and a part of it came out like this.  It’s been said over and over but it’s always worth repeating, or at least I think so.

"Each of us has our own personal mystery of how we meet birth; in a dark alley or a green meadow or an ocean of blue. A soft blanket by a fire, a warm tub of water, an operating table or a mix of them all. Whether we like it or not, it owns us, uses us, gifts us, shakes us up, swallows us, spits us out and cradles us. It forces us, hands tied behind our backs and our eyelids pulled open there to the dustiest corners of ourselves; the places we obsess and all that we ignore. Birth is that present moment, a reminder of who we have been and who we surrender to become. It offers a challenge to our humanness, giving the choice; faith or fear? Or both. It allows us to build walls to slam ourselves against and tools to smash them down. It hands us a key to open our cage and release into the world, crossing our fingers that the spirit emerges full of grace and healing, that it ascends with the wings of a free bird."

Feeling like a freebird.  But only because those ashes were so real.

there are so many ways ways to walk this dream.  dark alleys to take. barbwire fences to scale and trees with rotton bark to climb. fear can push into corners and still me in fright.  people can talk me into things i completely dislike.  i easily become a dragon, not the kind my kid draws on the sidwalk with pink chalk but the kind that rips down the walls of the mountain that shelters your from strife. i can worry about the next day or wish i had what i don’t today. i can point my finger at you and say what I wouldn’t want to hear.  i listen to things that i shouldn’t believe or care about and i hold them in my heart for day upon day until i sob on his shoulder as we sit under the Blood Moon and he looks me in the eye and asks me ‘did you know?  did you know that a flock of crows is called a Murder’. and I wipe my tears away and smile and know i hold that magic, the magic of murder.  the magic and murder of Love.  because in the end love wins.  love wins and it wins and it wins.  it pushes me to the ground and holds me by the shoulders and it never lets me up until i say it out loud, clear, from the bottom of my gut LOVE WINS.  it drools on my shoulder and pulls at my breasts and brings me peaceful sleep at night with the rise and fall of baby breath.  it is the only thing there really is.  it is the only thing there really is.

Love wins.