To Heidi

Yesterday was the day you were born
so I wore your favorite color
and walked by the sea--
Imagined we were in South Africa,
imagined you were only hiding.
I talked of butterflies,
that simple, white-winged inspiration
I followed home
to your wedding and then
your funeral.
In the church
I talked of your love
and begged those flowers
in those fragile, porcelain vases
to disappear.
One by one we stood
and said:
She was our butterfly
so full of light.
We sat on our knees
and bartered off every part of ourselves
for your breath, your laugh.
Cancer, they said.
And then, Wait.
To a woman with cancer
they said, WAIT.
I'd run to your arms
when I heard your voice in our hallway.
"Oh, Swee-tie" you'd say.
or something like it,
none of us could ever get it quite right.
You were 43 and fiercely, fearlessly happy
and when you walked into the room,
so were we.

Written 11/12/07

Sing Your Stories Out Loud November 6, 2008

Stars grow up and out of the earth
suppressed by cement,
only to fall back again.
Turned to mush under my feet with the force of Demeter's grief.
And despite this--
despite those things that threaten daily
to knock our hearts sideways and leave us
rooted and spinning out, out, out on the wet dark ground--
we are living.
we are Living.
It rains, and it rains, and it rains
and the air opens up like a hand
and we pull on the sound on the sound on the sound
til it comes bursting out:
more life, we say. more life.
We find someone to hug,
to hold to,
to look deep in the eye
towards hope.
and a voice that is not lost,
that will not be silenced,
that will not stand for a ban on love.
That will live in impossible Joy.

"Happy Biggest Day of Change for our Country Ever!"

Obama Obama Obama

Have class today, talked to mom, wrote in Journal. Going to Eden's to watch her cable as we don't have it.

How is anyone going to be able to focus at Cornish College of the Arts today?

Amanda, I love you, I hope you got your ballot in time.

Obama, Obama, Obama