Lessons From Tying Forget-Me-Knots

Random forays into written emotion

[lessonsfromtyingforgetmeknots]

The Answer

“I have learned to trust when a door closes.” She said this with the confidence of someone who had been there;  multiple times.

Like she had watched her existence immolate into ash while the cold bore knives through her shins.

And she had risen; or is ever-rising, metamorphsizing herself into being out of sheer grit.

I remember how she clawed her way across the floor; tendons of her wrist, contortions of sinew, wrung taut with the lust for survival-- of triumph.

And through it all,  her laugh echoed;  ever-singing, like she knew,  that the only prize for a life well-lived,

was to survive it.

[lessonsfromtyingforgetmeknots]

Evidence I have not yet found enlightenment

I want to spell your name backwards with my tongue. Take it letter by letter out of my mouth, Picking consonants from between my teeth.

I think about all the times you spent justifying why you shouldn’t have to improve while I was mining the darkest caverns of my being for the flecks of better.

But regret isn’t a language my body speaks, even when my core threatens immolation.

I refuse to be stagnant and the only thing you taught me is

there is so much trauma in the fact that you have chosen not to grow.

[lessonsfromtyingforgetmeknots]

For Christine: Doctor, Survivor, Fighter

I am my own Everest.

Had I been 5 years greener today I would not have survived. This day is a gift from my incredibly powerful spine self-forged in the fire of the very first time that a boy told me no one would ever love me and that it wasn’t abuse because he didn’t touch me.

And the very first time a man thought that locked elbows, fear-shot eyes, how it took him 5 tries to get me on my back in the second seat of my own car—spelled yes.

When the safest exit proved a false ending, that was rethought so quickly when he said “I think it’s more fun when we both finish”

I remember the ashen anger that eclipsed his face for an instant when I stuttered and looked away, recognizing that I probably didn’t have a choice If I wanted to get out unharmed. It took me 20 minutes of stammeringly evasive behavior to exit my back seat “unharmed”

And I could not be more grateful that I am one of the lucky ones.

He probably didn’t notice that I never made eye contact with him after getting out of the car, which might explain why he gushed about seeing me again. Only my roommate remembers how nervous I was sending an appropriate “no thank you” text. He had just sexually assaulted me and I was worried about upsetting him.

But even then, I knew that if anyone found out, I might lose everything. Not for any other reason than Society doesn’t care about women, or more accurately, Society doesn’t care about non-white men. I know this because there are far too many women like me. I know this because I’ve watched men Older and whiter than dust, bend over backwards to protect each other while Dr. Blasey Ford bore unimaginable pain in order to protect all of us, and even that might not be enough.

There is no word to express the level of gratitude I feel for Everest-spined women like her. Thank you for teaching me to earthquake my backbone into existence because I am nothing but an avalanche of strength even if all we wish to be is serene snow.

[lessonsfromtyingforgetmeknots]

No Nutritional Value

You are like golden wheat. Toasted warm, beautiful from afar, with all your facets and features in soft focus upon the expansive Heartland.

You are strangely fascinating like a wildfire at midnight from a mountaintop view.

On high, no one can hear one tree above the others no single trunk giving a final anguished smoldering song, instead only the cacophonous chaos and collapse of bark’d bodies.

After a long winter, and threshing through seasons, I cut my first slice of late-summer bread, thinking you are gospel.

Though I expect warmth and nourishment or salvation and sin, dancing on my tongue I am unsustained, unholy, and depleted.

I am an unmistakable tempest wild and cycloning forward with unparalleled intensity— a force of nature

I carve canyons, raise ranges and birth biomes; feeding nations from the storm inside my chest.

You are wonder bread and despite your golden crust You provide anything but nourishment.

[lessonsfromtyingforgetmeknots]

Frost and Friction

This tundra is endless and you are the only warm thing on the unholy side of zero. But it only takes a split second for your exhale to create cumulus on my glasses, and suddenly, I am praying that tomorrow is not yet a different season.

[lessonsfromtyingforgetmeknots]

Prayer for the Man Who Broke My Heart

Curled up the night is soft and I am lost in candlelight unexpectedly thinking of you.

Despite the mistakes you made with me, I wish you only good things.

May your cup of tea always be the perfect temperature. May you only hit green lights. May your mosquito bites never itch. May your tattoos stay vibrant forever May you never sunburn.

I hope you are well hydrated; and that you learn to sleep because someday my name won’t be the last one on your lips.

[lessonsfromtyingforgetmeknots]

Weekday Epiphany

No one ever tells you that healing can look like fractured mirrors, snow drifts at midnight and untuned guitar strings.

We’re all broken hearts and bruised egos waiting for cuts to keloid

I never expected  to find answers in  unfamiliar bedsheets.

[lessonsfromtyingforgetmeknots]

Unlikely Guests

I’ve been wondering if there’s some victory in vulnerability of calling out my sins; inviting them to the table and introducing them by first name.

If I name them, do they lose their power?

[lessonsfromtyingforgetmeknots]

Immaculately Imperfect

I want to peel back your skin and  go spelunking to find all the manmade caverns inside your chest not yet explored built from buckshot, the ricochet from another’s gun.

I want to climb inside all those chasms, sit down in the darkest part, and listen to the longest version of your story even if it’s told entirely in deep breaths.

Gazing upon pain-pocked walls I can already see the ruptured sutures and cauterization burns, from the failed attempts to stitch you whole again.

Inhaling slowly, I say a quiet thank you that I am neither a seamstress nor a surgeon; and I promise not to light any candles because I know how quickly wildfire spreads inside canyons.

I’m not here to heal or harm you and help is not a four-letter word. Keep your scars and don’t dare try to soften them. The scenery here is sublime.

[lessonsfromtyingforgetmeknots]

Atmospheric Science

[lessonsfromtyingforgetmeknots]

Controlled Chaos

Your entropy is just safe enough to draw me in.

[lessonsfromtyingforgetmeknots]

Renaissance

After too many years absent from writing, I am reviving this blog and with it, hopefully my poetry. My goal is to post at least once a week, mostly free verse poetry. However, especially in the beginning it will likely be works in progress as I am out of practice. Thanks for bearing with me. I appreciate the love, patience, and support beyond measure.

Rachel

[lessonsfromtyingforgetmeknots]

Revelations

I stopped writing the moment I met you and yet, still I breathe. Why?

[lessonsfromtyingforgetmeknots]

Stay Here With Me

Your bones are not meant for kindling.

Even when your own heart makes you feel like an infinite winter, self-immolation is never a reason for warmth.

[lessonsfromtyingforgetmeknots]

How to Save a Forest

If I have learned nothing else  from all the trees I turned into paper cuts over boys who never wanted to grow roots anyway, it was to set you free the instant I wrote the first line of our break up poem.

[lessonsfromtyingforgetmeknots]

Hiatus

After a year and half of consistent posting, I am sad to say that I can no longer keep up with the creative, personal, and professional demands on my life. For this reason, I am taking a break from this blog. This is not a permanent end, just a break until I restore some balance to my life. Know that you all continue to inspire me and that I will be back just as soon as possible. Until that time, I bid you poetry and health!

-Rachel

[lessonsfromtyingforgetmeknots]

LXXX.

Occasionally the new chapter begins with a small papercut.