Tag Archives: grief

Prism Blooming

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I.

I thought you were a prism – the birthplace of rainbows,
the hope for a future far from my grief.
You showed me a world built of color:
sunsets and deep conversation and dreaming;
emotion, electric with light.
But in the end, you were just a kaleidoscope
a jumble of broken parts I tried to make art
that never quite fit the way we planned.

I don’t blame you. You were trying to make yourself art too.
Our pictures were just too different, focus hazy.
The light fractured. The sun set. We rose separate.
I’m learning.

II.

Days passed, then weeks. I don’t remember much – it was all a blur
of staring, of crying, of not crying and staring empty some more.

Then a bud. A crack. A bloom of life. One night
spent among strangers who awoke as friends.
It wasn’t a prism, but it was light.

III.

As I stumbled through the next days, the bud grew
until the blaze, tended sweetly, became a garden.
Staring in the mirror, I forgot it was reflection
and I saw the colors for the first time.
I wasn’t looking for imperfection, and so I didn’t find flaws
just the prism radiating,
rainbow blooming through and beneath.
All along, the prism I needed
was me.

Mosaic Heart

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I.

When my heart fractured, it wasn’t beautiful. It was just broken. The edges cut deep into muscle and soul. I was more exhaustion than man, brittle and shaking. But if there’s one lesson my childhood taught me, it’s “don’t leave a mess.” So I picked up the shards, letting the tears bleed.

II.

Can you glue a heart back together with whispers of hope and the memory of dreaming? Or will it always be broken, even if you can find its shape again? I didn’t know. I fumbled the pieces into shape, and I hoped.

III.

It became a meditation, fitting one piece with the next, bridging colors and atriums, reconnecting arteries and emotion. Sometimes I lost the thread of hope and had to start again. Sometimes the tears washed a piece free. I may have fractured, but I did not crumble, and slowly, I became art.

IV.

Maybe I was always a masterpiece and you just taught me to forget. My heart casts a thousand reflections, every one of them beautiful, as I learn to love again.

V.

I start with myself.

Grief, Healing, a New Book, and Other Updates

These past few weeks have been difficult. A friend died, and it’s unclear whether it was suicide or accidental. What is clear is that she is gone. As an atheist, I don’t have the comfort of believing that she’s still around in the afterlife. With a single bullet, her energy and the light and love she carried within her dissipated, and that is a true tragedy.

The same day as that lovely human took her life, I found out another friend has inoperable cancer and an unknown amount of time left. This activist and inspirational human told me what matters is the fight to make the world a better, more equal place, but all I could feel was grief. For the past few weeks, I’ve been cycling through depression, anger, denial, and numbness, but I’ve finally begun to find the peace he told me about the cancer with.

The turning point was not what I expected. Grieving, broken, sliding from numbness to depression to crushing anger moment to moment, I drove my way home from a discussion at the local humanist center far from at peace. When I walked through the door, though, my roommate introduced me to “When Marnie Was There.” His favorite Studio Ghibli film, it was a moving, ultimately healing testament to overcoming tragedy, and when it ended, I felt lifted up with hope, the first hope I’d felt since the day of bad news.

Day to day, I’m finding my healing.

There’s been good news, too, though.

On July 20th, I put out a new book. Raw and honest, “Seven Ways to Break a Heart” deals with themes of heartbreak, addictive love, and tragedy in a deeply moving, transformative manner.

There will also be a book release party for this book on August 16th. Taking place at Maya Pizzeria in Mesa, Arizona from 7pm to midnight, there will be fantastic musicians, wonderful friends, my books, and some of the best pizza on Earth.

Later in August, I will, for the first time in years, be going back to college. I’d dropped out with only 4 classes left before my associate’s degree when I needed to appeal my financial aid suspension (I’d dropped too many classes due to a series of traumatic events that had severely exacerbated my PTSD) and been too overwhelmed and stressed by the appeals process to complete the steps to have financial aid returned. I finally took the necessary steps to appeal, and will be registering for my classes shortly.

Also, in February of next year in Bisbee, Arizona, I will be doing a workshop on “Navigating Gender Identity” as part of a series of workshops to help provide more information and support for the trans and non-binary community in Cochise County. I feel incredibly lucky to be part of this transformative movement toward a brighter future, and especially in as lovely of a place as Bisbee.

I’ve recently begun working again on my dystopian YA science fiction novel entitled “Crimson Class Rebel,” and I am 138 pages in. I recorded the first chapter as a little sneak peak for you guys, and I’ll be releasing that chapter soon.

The last bit of news is personal, but something I’m incredibly proud of. I’ve been struggling with weight gain for years, reaching 300 lbs at my highest, and feeling hopeless about my ability to lose any of it, but in the past couple months, I’ve managed to lose 28 lbs. While I’ve still got a way to go to reach my personal weight goals, I am proud of myself for overcoming my despair and stress to take steps that improved my health. Though I do believe that no one should be shamed or judged based on their weight, I personally was unhappy with mine, and am proud of what I have achieved on my own weight loss.

What have you achieved recently that has made you proud, and do you have any advice or things that have helped you to overcome your own moments of grief?

Orlando

When I first found out about Orlando, all I could think was, “It’s happening again.” There was no shock at the fact the murders happened. They happen, on a smaller scale, every day. Dread, yes. Crushing grief, yes. Fear, and a sense of how frail any perceived security is in the face of everyday hate, yes.

As the day has gone on, however, that fear and grief have strengthened, and with them has come anger and exhaustion. Every day, violence hits minorities in our communities. This senseless act of hate was inspired by nothing more than sexuality and race.

How many more tomorrows like this must hit before we learn to accept those who are different than us? How many more body bags will be filled with gay and POC and trans lives? How long until a body bag closes over my own head?

Still, I will shine. I will shine for the lights that were cut short in Orlando. I will shine for my dead brothers and sisters of every hate crime. I will sparkle so fucking bright that all the people who follow me into the bathrooms with threats and fists will be blinded. I will shine with the fierce love we all deserve, until the whole world shines along with me.

But it still won’t bring the dead back.

Razzle Dazzle

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I recently had to put a pet down for the first time. I’d had Tazzle for 7 years, since she was almost a year old, and she was a loving, loyal cat who got rapidly and inexplicably sick, losing much of her body weight, her ability to walk, and her ability to control her bladder in a matter of days. I made up a little ditty as I drove her to the vet, and sang to her the whole way there, then petted her until the light left her eyes.

I don’t know that I believe in an afterlife, but I do know that she was loved, and she’s no longer in pain. I can’t really ask for more than that.

She used to love being called Razzle Dazzle Tazzle, and I’d call her over to me with that and she’d come running, purring up a storm. This poem is for her.

Razzle Dazzle

I’d like to say I remember a day
when scattered hopes are gathered,
but the pounding in my head
leaves me far too bruised and battered.

You’ve been gone for two days
and already I’m a haze
of bad dreams, restless sleep
and a numbness I can’t beat.

I search for happy endings
whenever I try to write,
but tonight tears pour too free,
water drowning my sight.

Tazzle, you were far too young
to be given to the Reaper.
He laid his claim just the same,
no longer here to suffer.

Razzle Dazzle, dance on stars,
but remember me someday.
Find me when I leave this life,
old and wizened gray.

We’ll tumble down a rainbow
together that day.

<3

Light in Loss

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A precious friend passed away recently, and her death has been one of the hardest things I’ve survived. A lot of me died with her, but not all the things I lost were bad. When her light disappeared from the world, so too did my ability to justify procrastination. I lost some of my distractibility, and a large portion of my reserve from those around me.

She was so young when she died. She taught me time is limited, and that we never know how much more of it we have. We can only live, and live fully, so that when our stars burn out, we leave without regrets.

Since she passed, my creative output has soared, but my heart is still long from mending. At the most random of times, I find tears leaking from the corner of my eyes. I’ve never been one to cry, even at loss, but I find myself doing so every time I remember she’s gone.

My grief bares my soul in a way I am far from comfortable with, but I’m still not sure that it’s bad. Still, every poem I write holds her at its heart, and I weep with the words, happy or sad.