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“Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.”
--William S. Burroughs


I'm finished settling. I'm finished living a half-inspired life. I'm finished selling myself short.

I refuse to remain enslaved to an idealized vision of the past and a shattered vision of what I thought that my future could be. I find reality more refreshing these days, and I'm learning that I have the power to create a reality more pleasant than my dreams.

Funny, that it took the abandonment of all of my dreams to come to this realization.

I have so much potential and so much to give. I know that I deserve more out of life and relationships. I'm ready to truly live before I die.

I think we could all use a bit more trust in our own inner strength and our intrinsic value. It's time that we stopped accepting half-truths, stopped settling for anything less than our best, stopped trying to be happy with the half-hearted efforts of others who cannot love us in the ways that we truly deserve.

You are beautiful and powerful in your own way. Believe it and live it.

I know I’m getting over something when I can finally write a poem about it.

My last loss

After Rainer Maria Rilke
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/you-who-never-arrived/

Love, you taught me how to leave,

palms outstretched,

my hope, a garnet gemstone

floating weightless away.

Each step,

an annunciation.

You taught me how to bend,

but never break.

Chalk it up to missed connections

in infinite iterations of space.

Our melodies wove in sync,

and then out.

Your impermanence stitched through me,

I spin through cycles of

possibility.

I recall

Your eyes’ vast silence

and I wonder if you were nothing

and no one at all.

I recall

how you buried

your face in my neck,

and held my edges lightly.

I recall

the vast demise,

and how you almost tried.

Your resignation, a black expanse

running rivers through my chest,

my invisible strings

clenched tight

around your neck.

My white knuckle grip.

And I try to forget

how you bloomed a field of flowers

in my stomach, and then

tore them up by their roots.

My colors spilled,

bold and brazen. They run,

always in excess.

Yours withheld.

For all the love in letting go,

I’ll learn to forget the way

you almost understood,

and will never know.

--Alicia (2013)