I'm outside your house with a dozen roses in my hands and an apology written all over my face. I'm knocking on your door with muted fingers and tangled memories. Somewhere in my pocket is the heart I should have given you the first time my eyes embraced your own.

Pickles and Tomatoes

I never liked pickles until a few weeks ago. The pickle aroma was always alluring and tantalizing but no matter how many times I crunched my teeth into it, I didn’t like the consistency. I didn’t like the ridged boarder of the sliced pickle getting lost in the slushy green core. I always felt like I was fighting the sensations and confusing my taste buds. It wasn’t appetizing to sink my teeth into it. I’d buy the cheeseburger and alienate the pickles next to the soggy slab of tomatoes. That too, by the way, wasn’t appreciated up until a few weeks ago.

I still get lost in my thinking. In my adjusting and often times when I had all things figured out—changed and altered to a new beginning—the past always seemed to creep up and I have yet to figure out if I’m back tracking.

I use to image myself on this mountain and on a perfectly good bicycle. The chains were greased to a smooth cycle, the wheels smelled of fresh rubber, and every glimmer of metal was spotless. I would see myself attempting to ride with determination even though the incline was near impossible—almost vertical. I imagined the wheels spinning with an intense joy, pleasure, yet somehow cynical. That my knees would press down the petal and up in a perfect Ferris wheel motion. I’d be hunched over the bars with an earnests face. Sometimes my eyes scream with willpower, other times they’d melt with defeat because I wouldn’t be going anywhere but stationary.

I wanted to prove them wrong. I wanted someone to understand me—to tell me things would be alright but the ones I held dear slipped away. I not only became stationary but solitary in my efforts.

Within two months I found out what losing trust was like—all over again. I found out what broken hearts were made of. I found out what broken friendships tasted like. I found out that pillows can be tear stained.

And I didn’t like the dry salt lingering on my lips and swelling up my eyes. I didn’t like the way I looked with it—those eyes I never recognized, the eyes I knew were once mine. I didn’t like the frizz of my hair, the fried texture of ugliness. So I had it chopped away in hopes the entangled memories, the remnants of tears would vanished with split ends. But they didn’t. Not completely.

I bit into that cheeseburger. Maybe absently mindedly and forgetting my routine as I so often did. Maybe that’s why I left the pickle and the tomatoes right where they should be. Maybe I was subconsciously fed up with my routine. Maybe subconsciously I wanted to change what I felt was wrong—what caused wrong. Maybe pickles and tomatoes could answer the questions I fumbled around with.

Yet, as I bit further into my solitary mind, the deeper the wound became—at least that’s what it was like without the extra perplexities of life. That’s what it was like without the flavor of ridged slushy pickles and soggy tomatoes. At least that’s what it was like without the chopped away hair and continuous routine—the uphill battle of climbing the wrong mountain.

Some things are beautiful when left be—without being conquered such as the mountain I put myself upon. Some things, with time, look better amongst a sunset horizon full of crimson hues and ruffled lavender blotches. And sometimes, when given time to muster up the strength of empowerment and wisdom, are we then capable of rebuilding the bicycle to better accommodate the mountain of life’s obstacles.

WIP

Fuck. I think I just ran over the cat. Again. That’s the thing about cats—they like to dive under cars. Chicken, we call it. They call it something else but I don’t speak cat.

Rhino

She had to be butch just by looking at her. Her voice stubborn with a bare tone of independence. Her hair a fried mocha hue—fleeing strands gravitate away from the pony tail strain. This wasn’t what was unique about her apparent masculine disposition. She made a comment, light and simple. She said, “I was with a woman once,” Told you she was butch, “who had a tattoo of a Rhino.” She paused and laughed at the obscurity of a Rhino tattoo. Not once did her eyes look up from the glass case she peered into—jewelry findings staring back up at her, “Little did I know she snored like one.”

Butterfly

A cocoon—a harden breath of winter's whisper.

Thrive into the crevasses, the grooves, the drips of the spring's dew.

Born in the memory, the flicker, the shimmer, the remark of a star GRIPPING upon
darkness reminding us why we dream.

A slash of color hidden beneath the wraps of a desire to be. Something new. The pitter heart, dashes with glory. With excitement. Anticipation.

Silent graves lurking on the sway of the wind—the branch nearly raw. Exposed. Hangs but a life—delicate the string.

There, when spring finally twists and spirals over the horizon, does it lick
across the home of a dreamer.

Crinkle. Crack. Rebirth.

A cocoon—an echo shell of something much more.

{ When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

~Victor Frankl }