"Earnesty and clarity, those wonderful mentalities of decent positivity are all that we can scribe"

It's been 9 months since I last wrote in my blog...I wish I hadn't done that. It's funny and almost alien to look back and see that my last entry was in Zanzibar where I had so little faith in people. I was so worn down at that point that every negative interaction was a chip away of a thinning beam. There is so much that has happened that I will never be able to fully remember. The ridiculous nature of it all caused memories to fold in on themselves and feel like distant dreams - but they said that this would happen. It took the first 2 months in India for my dreams to realize I was in another world and only subtle reminders of home to reverse the mental shift. 

I thought coming back to the states would be like ripping off a band-aid, but instead it was just the bandage itself. The anxiety, the stress, the constant state of being overwhelmed, the unsteady nature of my thoughts and movements, the sense of disassociation - wrapped me tightly into solitary thought. What's the point of living in that state of paralysis? I've come so far from that place in so many ways. 

I want to start writing again and make a space to write fragments of thoughts again. 

I. 

In the end, I paid one hundred dollars to get myself arrested. The sum wasn't directly related to the consequence but I should have known. She said everything would be fine. When it started, I kept my mouth shut. I said my prayers before bed, kept the pills in their bottles on the counter and she praised me. 

Sundays lectured on the civil disobedience of our people. We were more about the group itself and less about the rituals that orchestrated them.. Jesus' body and blood was a symbol nourished our souls and Luther spoke 'truth'. Hey, we weren't popular like the Catholics but I was a part of something bigger than myself.

But our ministers had affairs and stole money and lied to the father. And I was taken away from my people and became mutated, episcopal. Then, I was schooled with a cross, a uniform and a mother's grace to make a good life. 

I fell from the universe to become the root of a tree, built to support but not meant to break free and Yaweh became a function of a cultural relativity. The great architect for the morally civilized... 

II.

Take two steps.
back to the space
where you placed your palm
in the center of my chest
and slowed my wild spinning.

So you can sew my sinew
to mend the folds of a cerebral
hell that never meant to harm 
but never promised to liberate
I'm telling you to do this.

Yet, there's a hole in God's ether
where all the ringing goes
the shadows of the swallows
and the songs of a willow

swallowed by a heart I used to know.