She Radiates...

When I met her, she was dancing in the middle of a drum circle. Venice Beach. Late 90s. She was young but you know she just had It. That charge. That inner blast of light. She wore bells around her ankles and flowers weaved through her hair. So blissfully lost in her own rhythm, yet so perfectly at home, her feet twisting and bouncing in the dance. Her eyes told me she was just a natural; a natural sister, a natural friend, a natural lover. The kind of person who brings shine to everyone she graces with her smile. I knew she had to be my friend. But more.

So I passed her a note with my number on it that said we should do rain dances in the mountains someday. 

We did. Many times.

I don’t know how I got so lucky to be close to her.  But I did.

She brings flowers over in tin cans and creates cards with ripped paper and old photographs. 

She strings rainbow-colored beads, blesses them with flower nectar and wraps them around your wrist.

She stirs fresh food into potions that unlock your spirit into pure creation.

Her heart is open to everyone who enters her space. She listens with her gut and rarely does she have a lot to say, because she believes the most love can be expressed when you truly listen. Just listen.  

Someone like her can’t be captured or contained. She can’t be owned. She is in demand and she chooses her circle wisely, holding only the purest closest to her, to bring strength and faith so she can spread her shine to the greater world. She’s a wildflower; everyone wants to grab on to her stem and bring her home. She is Home.

But she is here to remind us that we all can Be. Like that. Pure love. She is here to remind us that we don’t need her; we only need to show up for ourselves and serve with love like the wind serves the wild bird on its journey.

No more searching, she whispers. We are already home.

love

Love Lives At The Sea...

The light by the ocean is sublime. There's a slice of each day when the light cuts through the window and brushes the entire room with golden blue, a shade almost indescribable. If you have ever lived at the edge of Earth and Water, you know what I mean.

I dream of being back there. Yellow bamboo floors and shiny silver counter-tops. Light pouring from the ceiling and every window flung open, capturing the sea’s saltiness in each step I take from room to room. There is nothing like that, being there at the gates of land to sea. You morph into a different breed of being; not quite a land creature, your toes always dipping into the lapping love of our liquid planet.  Eventually, you can breathe under water. 

We always ate fish. Fish with fresh vegetables, gooey and sweet. We drank a mash-up of limes and bubbles and a splash of the hard stuff.  You can stay up all night and turn the volume high on life. No worries: the waves pounding outside the windows filter everything. Holds everything. Brings everything back to the Source. We made love with the sounds of our center and knew it was being carried by the waves back to the Mother of all things Hot.

In the mornings we’d wake up with nothing on, a piece of silk draping over a part of us, and sip warm coffee as the sun came up. Sleeping in was never needed; the vital energy of the watery line is strong. The sun’s stretch up is always invigorating. The gull’s song enlivens the heart.

I dream of being back there. The caramel colored walls. The deep soaking tub. The sand at our doorsteps. The sand in our bed. The sand in our hair.

Love always lives at the sea.

love

Born to...

There are little girls who want to be dancers when they grow up,

so they take ballet and tap and jazz 
and hip-hop if their mothers are cool.

And then there are little girls who don't want to be dancers...they just are.

She was one of the latter.

You'd see her her in line, weaving her hips in a perfect figure eight

while the boy behind the register bags her bananas and kale.

You'd see her running through the park, 

sashaying and snapping her fingers to a rhythm in her head.

Everyone in her wake wishing they knew her song. 

She sat at a desk at the most boring job on Earth,

and when she thought not one was watching,

she'd grind her ass into the chair, lift her knees, close her eyes, 

and move her shoulders to an imaginary beat.

She drove her co-workers mad.

They were always watching.

She made love to a tribal beat, tangoed while she drank her tea.

Spilling herself along her way.

Some days, she wished she could just stop and blend in.
She always looked out of time with everyone else's beat.


How do they do it? she wondered.
Stay so damn still. Like they don't even hear
the rhythm of the universe.

love

Don't Look Down...

She was like a teetering mess at the top of a spiral staircase;

 everyone was waiting for her fall...except him.

He was holding his breath for another reason altogether.

Would she stay or would she fly.

Would she laugh or would she cry.

He'd write fairy tales in his next life, he imagined.

Ones where the princess wasn't swayed by

demons or whispers or powders or any king's poisons.

Nothing would matter except her prince, he decided.

That's how his stories would end. In his next life.

He couldn't help but think

that whoever was writing his fairy tale lost the plot.

A few pages had gone missing and no one could find them.

Because all of a sudden, there he was...

standing at the bottom of a spiral stair

wondering how the hell she got up there.

And all he could do was wait and wonder...

Would she stay or would she fly.

Would she laugh or would she cry.

The stories he'd write would end better than this.

In his next life.

love

Fly Away, Fly Away Fly Away Home...

She tried to wear feathers every chance she could,

just in case she needed to fly away quickly.

It was one of the first lessons her parents ever taught her.

Before how to hold her fork or how to say cheese

or how to sing Brand New Key.

Her favorite lullaby she'd sing to herself

when they forgot.

They forgot a lot. 

When the clashes came from the kitchen,

she'd stare out her window and envy the birds.
If only she had feathers.

She grew up fast and thought he could save her just as...

so they flew away fast as fast as they could. 

Together. 

Her on his wing and him in her heart.

He carried her so long she lost all the feathers she'd collected.

They just blew away with her memories.

Which was a lovely feeling until it wasn't.

And that's how she happened to be at the tattoo parlor yesterday.

Growing feathers, one by one.

Just in case she'd need to fly away quickly one more time.

love

Timing...

She had all these rules before he came along.

A long list of everything she wouldn't do

before it was the right time to do.

But he made her lose all her sense of timing.

Ten minutes after she met him,

she stayed out three hours too late.

Fell into him thirty after that.

Called in sick to work the next morning,

even though she was far from it.

I should called in thrilled, she thought.

And together they stayed happily, 

eating Italian on her pristine Frette,

even for breakfast, 

staying up far too late,

calling in thrilled whenever they possibly could.

As for her list? No longer necessary.

There wasn't anything she wouldn't do with him.

love

I'm Sorry...

She never apologized. Never.

Said her parents were hippies and didn't believe in regret.

Practically outlawed the emotion and any of its word forms.

She'd simply show up after work in her party shoes

and proclaim it a day for celebration.

And somewhere between drink number one and bar number two
and her bed or mine...

I'd forget all about our fight.

She was the most magical girl I'd ever loved.
All of her quirks were cute.

She never washed pans or plates because
"yesterday still tastes good to me."
She couldn't make a morning meeting to save her life.
"I can't be effective if my soul is weary."
And she expected all of us to understand that
"a girl who grew up without clocks just has to make her own time."


My bohemian girl.

About a year later, I finally met her parents.

One a scientist. One a school secretary. Never hippies.

I asked her why she lied to me about something so...basic.
And she had no answer.

The one time she could have said it,
the one time she should have wanted to say it,
she didn't.

I half-expected to see her the next day outside work,

but she was gone.

In more ways than one, that girl was gone.

love