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

Merry Go Round...

She played every carnival game like it was her destiny to win.

She hoped and gasped 

and jumped up and down and bit her bottom lip.

It was almost tragic when she lost.

Even her freckles seemed to fade.

The hardened carnies always always took pity 

and gave her the grand prize. 

She thought about them as she sat across from him

at what would be their last dinner together.

As much as she'd played like he was her destiny...

as much as she'd hoped and gasped

and jumped up and down and bit her bottom lip raw...

Odd, he thought. It's as though her freckles just faded.

Right before my eyes.

She never ever won the ring toss.

love

Test Of Time...

It was only a test.

Even though we were golden together, I wasn't sure I was made to be your only. So I blamed life's timing and whispered a someday promise, believing that might hold you forever until I could. And every second after you nodded and agreed with me marked another piece of my heart breaking away. 

I saw you a few nights later at sushi with that ridiculously cute girl. There was no need to swallow my sobs; her laughter was the only sound you heard. 

I wish I could have been sure of you. I wish I'd followed my heart just one more time and let my brain close her eyes. It's one of my most profound regrets. Because you were my heart.

But I'm sure now. Dead sure that I want to be that girl sipping saki next to you, stopping your heart with my love.

love

More...

We were always just friends, except for the few times when we were more. Those moments still play reruns in my memory when nothing else is on, but friends is mostly how we'd describe us.

I saved your texts and I save them still. Just in case I need a good morning and a sweet dreams. I can always count on you for those. Without fail, you are my first in the morning and my last at night.

But nothing more than that, anymore. Not even early-morning pancakes at the dive. Not even "Come hear me play." Not even grab a bite after all the afters. 

And that's enough. That's who you were meant to be for me. My early morning and my late night.  

Can't really begin or end without you...

love

Write...

He told me he was writing a series of short stories. Much like David Sedaris or Jonathan  Safran Foer. Only better. Funnier. He mailed me lines that should have been in the New Yorker, and promised I'd be the first to see a more rounded-out draft. I'm still waiting. The rejection letters weren't disheartening. They were an honor. He was this close, his ideas upon ideas littering the papers lazing about in the afternoon breezes.

I left a longtime love to be with this dreamer, throwing away stable for everything but...

I doubted myself and him every minute of the day until four o'clock hit. Because that's when inspiration hit, too, with the uncorking of a cheap table red. 

Together, we built epic sentences that meant nothing in the morning.

Story of our life.

When I finally left him, there were pieces of me littering his loft...lazing about in the afternoon breezes. I wonder if he ever picked them up.

love

Roots That Grow Deep...

We were seventeen and both of us had cruising parents. Yours were hippies. Mine were just crazy gypsies.

It was easy to sneak away on the Island and do all the things we weren't suppose to do in the States. Everything seemed normal enough here, in comparison. I made love for the first time with a local boy. I learned about medicine from a lady who healed with a can of shark's teeth. I smoked what the locals smoked and drank where they drank. The joints they used to take me to had juke boxes with 1980s R-n-B and old country songs.  A juxtaposition to the tribal beats that came down from the edge of the water.

I walked in the place, this one owned by man who could wind his hips like a clock. It was  just another night my parents wanted to be alone on the boat to "do their thing" and I ordered my favorite mixed drink to celebrate my independence and forget my loneliness. A whiskey and ginger ale. Somehow I got something purple that tasted like mangos and pineapple, and only one got me totally messed up. 

You walked in too that night. Your parents had just docked their boat. You were from Baltimore. I was from N.Y. Feeling like a stranger on an island forever, I finally felt at home. We knew each other in just one glance.

You been here long? You asked me.

A month. 

You staying much longer?

As long as my parents want to. We're headed south. Turks and Caicos, I think. My dad wants to live there, maybe. Who knows. They're crazy.

Wanna go for a walk?

And since that night, we knew. We just knew. Buttercup Baby playing on repeat in the background. Old Mr. Bassie winding his hips after too many. The sea art clinging to our spirits, but our ache for home in our hearts. We knew we'd both seen the world in ways nobody else had. The grime and grit and beauty of the island life, of being nomads with our home in the deep blue.

And now you and I have roots. Roots that grow deep in one place. We traveled far to find each other.  

Now we just stay put.

love

Tightrope...

He leaves for work before the sun comes up, and lets me sleep in his one-room apartment on Las Palmas smack in the middle of Hollywood. I work nights, and come by his place around two a.m., waking him up with a bang on the window.

I sleep for a while and then stumble to the kitchen and pour the coffee he made hours before. I stop at the turntables and put on a scratched up copy of Rockers to Rockers. He always tells me to be careful with that one. Place the needle on the record very carefully. I always try. It's my favorite.

I light a smoke and open his front window. Kids walk by who should be in school. The streets in Los Angles already hot and wild.

I grab a notebook and a pen and do for him what I do every single morning.

I write him a love note. I lay on the couch and remember the night before and how he held me so close and whispered how hard he loved me and how my lips were perfect.

I write him: You are cool. The coolest guy I'd ever been with. For one, you don't treat me like crap. Secondly, you make me feel like a queen. These are two things I've never felt before. So this means a lot. 

And the curve in your lower back is perfect to lay my hands on.

And the blue in your eyes are a pool to dive into.

And your hands. Your hands can build dreams against my skin. They are the only hands I ever want to hold me in that way.

Thank you for the strawberry milkshake you made me this morning after I was done serving pasta on Melrose to a bunch of drunks.

I write things like that. I poured it all in. I did this every morning, leaving  it on his pillow for him to find in a few hours. The one that smelled like a mix of me and him. And I'd go about my day.

And now, I don't have time to write him love notes.The work the kids the life. I am full.  But now, he comes home from work every day and hands one to me. A love note to make up for the years he never did.

Life is a perfect balance when you find true love.

love

I'll Wait Forever...

He told me he loved me so much that he'd set me free. That he couldn't touch my body the way I wanted. That his heart couldn't touch my heart the way it needed. He said his love for me was so true that he'd let me go.

Go. He said. Be free. I'm holding you back.

From what?

From your dreams.

Bullshit, I told him.

This is what it really is: You're too scared to touch me that deep. Too scared to open your heart so it digs into mine and imprints within the echo chamber and sounds throughout my body forever. You're a wimp. This is your easy way out of Love. Easy way out of working at us.

You aren't mine, he said. I can feel the walls between us. Become who you need to be...without me. I'll never be good enough for you.

Bullshit. You are everything you are, and I love you just that way. I'm not yours, but we are ours. Our stars align like mirror images and my heart beats on your off-beat. You figure out how to smash those walls your own fear built. You just need to let go. Not let me go.

But I walked out anyway because what's a girl to do?

I got some paint. I painted the city that night. Tagged it with flowers. There. I found myself because I was never lost. Sometimes love needs a moment or two to settle into itself. I could have done anything under that full moon, but I painted beauty and thought of him and his shoulders. His smile. His potential.

And because I am the woman I am, I will wait.  I'll wait forever until he gets it.

I went back home when the sun was rising, covered in paint, and climbed into bed and marked his body with graffiti that said Mine. All Mine.

love

We Have Everything...

Did you know that's licorice fern growing on the side of that tree? And in the spring you can pull them by their roots and bring them home and make tea? And then your cough will go away...

But always ask the licorice fern first, and the tree it grows on. Always ask before you take.

She wandered up the path looking at the sides of trees, her miniature version of my eyes sparkling through the flood of light coming through the forest ceiling. 

Did you know that the nettles are starting to cover the forest floor and we can gather them and bring them home and drink the tea and we'll feel as bright as it is green? Did you know if you get stung while gathering the nettles there's a plant that always grows right by them that helps the sting go away? Just rub it on your skin.

She crouched down. Hot pink rain boots and her orange tutu over bluejeans was her style. Her hair uncombed, but always a bit of mama's lip balm over her lips. And bangles. Loads of bangles on each arm.

Where, mama? Where are the nettles?  I got down next her and pointed out the heart-shaped leaves growing just above the surface of the Earth. Mama? Where is the plant that takes away the sting?  

Right there, pointing to the spiny, leafy fern.

Did you know we are given all we need? That everything is here, growing right under our feet? That all we have to do is look and listen and we will be healed?

Did you know it's all perfect?  Especially you?

She smiles and runs to an open field up ahead and lies down.

Come on, Mama! Come over. Lie next to me. Watch the clouds...

I'll be right there. 

love

We All Need Poppies...

There was little house in the middle of nowhere, shaped like a pyramid and walled with windows curtained with flowers of every shade. An ancient Lincoln Continental went rusted on the property, and poppies grew from its tires and trunk.

We knew it was ours. Our home for now.

We had to flee the city, a mass of addicts and aggression. We were taking on the troubles of the town. The noise and the traffic was beginning to settle in our bones and we were scared it would never pass. The rush and stress was not just around us, it was becoming us. It was time for a sabbatical of all things concrete and lit-up neon. We needed flowers, rotting cars, elk in the morning, and northern lights at night.  We needed a moon so big we could hop on it.

We needed solitude, quiet, and each other.

It's funny how running away to a tiny mountain valley will heal almost anything. Lazy mornings with chai tea. Lunches with organic tomatoes from the hothouse. And dinners of river salmon and fresh chèvre. Fires under stars that were so close they become part of your eyes, and the moon so close it was on your horizon. There was no need to look up. It was in front of our hearts.

"Your moon," he said. "That's your moon. Big and pregnant."

And it's your moon. Wild and crazy.

We'd hear the spirits up in the hills slamming and cawing and hooting and howling along with the animals. We'd see flashing lights out of the corners of our eyes and sense there was more. More to everything we could see. 

love

Love Notes On Trees...

They were so pissed at us.

It wasn't the twenty-five minute hike to the perfect alcove covered in a slick carpet of dark moss. that changed their colors, ankle-down. No. It was because the ceremony lasted only ten. 

We didn't care. The spot jumped out on a hike and we knew, like only two could know, that it was the spot that was blessed for our love. Blessed for our union. Fireflies danced by in troupes. There were bells dripping from branches and love notes tacked to bark. 

A fire burned while his family wished we'd just gone to the courthouse. Mine would never forgive  that we skipped the church.

But this was our perfect moss field. This was our altar built with willow love and colored with marigolds and holding every ancient deity we could find. We didn't want to leave anyone out. They were candles to burn and our Oms to chant and our hands to hold. Wasn't that enough?

It turns out that it didn't matter whether anyone was there or not. Once we met in the middle, our eyes locked and we never once looked anywhere else. The sun came through the trees and people gasped at the beauty, but we had our own. All I could see was my future in his eyes. The someday little ones that were to come. The dingy old trailer we'd camp in at the Jalama beach. The long labors and the all-night nursing and how he'd get up to change their diapers and let me sleep, always. That man.

There were no vows. Just a promise to always remember how beautiful that moment was, and every moment would be. To never hold each other from our dreams. Ever. And to tie on each other's wings so we could fly so high.

And so we did.

love

Traffic Honey...

I'm driving up the 101. 

It's July and the heat is on. Traffic  stopped. I'm wearing a see-through tank and a black miniskirt, with my bikini underneath. It's Saturday and I always begin that day watching the sun rise from the sand, a blanket under me, my notebook in hand, watercolors by my side.  

My muse lives in the early morning light of the beach.  

I have a job at some second-rate production company that makes me show myself on a Saturday afternoon when I should be hiking Runyon or shopping for vases and pretty shoes or picking out the freshest produce from the farmer's market.  But I'm young.  And hungry for more than fresh limes.  And so I hop on the 101 and head over the hill. 

I sit in traffic while  late 90's alternative rock plays on the deck of my close-to-repossession white wagon. My sandals flung off.  My hair sprayed with sea and sand. My thighs exposed to my eyes. They're burnt. 

Too much sun is never too much sun. 

I feel eyes burning through me. Someone is staring. I turned up the music to wash away my vulnerability. I looked to the right. Nothing. I looked to the left. Then up.

He's in a truck. A passenger. Looking down. At me. 

I'm not scared or angry or violated. I am getting checked out. I am in awe. Tingled. Giddy. He's so tall, so big, his presence fills my car and suddenly he is close...right next to me.  I can smell the fresh espresso on his breath. 

I look up at him and nod. Like I knew. Him. Always. 

 

He smiles. His tooth chipped. His head shaved. His eyes crystal blue as this rare clear, smog-free sky. White shirt makes his olive skin bounce out. I can feel it.  

We sit that way for ten minutes not knowing what to do. Just looking. At each other. Smiling. Knowing. Traffic untangles and cars move but we creep along. Stuck like honey on the freeway. I try not to crash. But I do. I crashed and fall hard. 

We fell in love on the 101.

love