angelbirdflies

I've been feeling the weight of loneliness a lot lately and doing my best to befriend it rather than resist or harden or numb. How? Good question. I've tried many things but the thing that is working best is to focus my gaze on this moment and this one and this, knowing I have all I need to meet this ever changing instant. Here's what I mean: Today was hot. I went to the gym and after my workout I stepped out of the air-conditioned rooms and into an eighty degree day. It took my breath away. I stood still, transfixed by an overwhelming sensation of warm air caressing cool skin. I closed my eyes to inhale the last days of summer like an embrace so sweet and complete it left no room for lonely. Of course the feeling didn't last forever. Feelings never do. But it did last long enough for me to feel held. And that was enough. I know many of you are also feeling the shadow of loneliness after a pandemic year, a social shut down, a continual influx of fractious ne

If I were a cinnamon peeler  I would ride your bed  And leave the yellow bark dust  On your pillow.  Your breasts and shoulders would reek  You could never walk through markets  without the profession of my fingers  floating over you. The blind would  stumble certain of whom they approached though you might bathe  under rain gutters, monsoon.  Here on the upper thigh  at this smooth pasture  neighbour to you hair  or the crease  that cuts your back. This ankle.  You will be known among strangers  as the cinnamon peeler's wife. I could hardly glance at you  before marriage  never touch you  --your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.  I buried my hands  in saffron, disguised them  over smoking tar,  helped the honey gatherers...  When we swam once  I touched you in the water  and our bodies remained free,  you could hold me and be blind of smell.  you climbed the bank and said  this is how you touch other women  the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.  And yo