I Want to Be Ugly

I feel more and more feral.

I want a different word. Unhinged.

I want to be ugly. I want to be a mess—show my ass.

Bit by bit, I’m letting loose again. Saying more. Saying less. Using my face and body to communicate.

It is noticeable.

I want them to see my wholeness. I won’t shy away.

I play with myself, my thoughts, my perceptions. I challenge. I rebel.

I believe in letting the darkness play out. Something is ready this era. I have wants. I’m human too. And I’m a generous woman.

I want to be afraid and safe.

I’ve been questioning reality and mortality. Getting nowhere close to anything that soothes and makes sense.

I am struggling to surrender to the care I feel.

I’m realizing I move similarly to my dad

In and out.

How I refuse to acknowledge that others are attached to me and that they are a person. How I’ve lost some humanness through the cracks of me.

Emotionally, I intellectualize my emotions and others’. I feel deeply, but I’m not connected to my feelings fully. I float above, observing.

Solitude protected me from rejection.

Solitude protected me from the noise of the world.

Solitude protected my journey to myself.

I ended up alone while becoming everything.
I am questioning everything about relationships.
I see what part of me must die.
A big chunk of my identity.

How pathetic. How humbling these human feelings.

I bite my tongue. Resentment fills my mouth as acid.

Behind the barricades
The grip on surrender

I found my sun
By my bedside
On a river
It didn’t take me
Where I’m going
Oh, the faces
I meet

A piece of her
Crawled from her insides
When they were all fresh and overdue
When nobody wanted her
She couldn’t keep herself

I’ve been delving into a new territory with my art.

Bit by bit, I’m letting loose again.

She Who Lives in My Chest

my heart is selfish
and only wants me

She’s abusive,
intrusive.
She swallows me hidden.

I’m in love with her
I trust her

She forces me,
shoves truth
out from my belly
through my clenched teeth

She makes me throw up,
nice and neat.
She edges me to moonstone tears

Even I am sick of me
and my selfish heart

She allows me to fold
as she soaks into my Viking thighs

I wouldn’t still be alive
without her

The Shape of Listening

Learning how to let the image breathe. Practicing restraint, symbolism, space. Trusting simplicity more.

✶ handmade paper, sunprints, cinnamon bark, embroidery, glitter, fern clippings & cowerie shells ✶