Archive for August, 2008


breathe love

the question isn’t will you love me, why don’t you love me anymore, or why has love forgotten about me? love cannot be given or taken. it is everywhere. i am love. you are love.

let me breathe love towards you like a fire breathing dragon. do you feel its incessant heat against your face, the way it dares to life places inside of you that you have long ago mourned and buried? don’t turn away and cover your face. you don’t need to fear love, say it won’t last, or pretend it doesn’t exist. it will never leave you.

the only question worth asking is why are you still waiting for something that is everywhere?

my heart leaped out of my chest like a small wrinkled frog. it opened its mouth, tongue dangling, panting as it ingested the contents of the room. a cycle of life transpired with each exchange: pale orange mist during inhalation and bright red sun during exhalation.

it sat on the white and pink patterned dresser in the corner of my room and stared at me. i watched it beat without me and  lost myself  in the beauty of silence filling the room. i  pet  it over and over amazed by its satin texture.

it grew plumper with each caress until suddenly it burst apart like twenty bullets had ricocheted its inner fibers. my cheeks seemed wet but i couldn’t feel the tears. how do you perform resuscitation on a heart? i gathered the pieces and attempted to mold them into one. it resisted; it wasn’t clay nor was it broken. instead of one, it was now twenty vesicles of love.

i pressed slivers of my heart to the space beneath my tongue, the inside of my eye lids, the narrow pads of my fingertips, and every spare inch of skin i could find. my heart intertwined the thread of its veins into my flesh. soon each breath, kiss, word, step, and touch i gave became more than just a habitual act; they were love. i was love, a love that didn’t fear, hide, or need — a love that only loved.

– lissa

postsecret photo uploaded by iceblink240.

make believe treehouse

***

animal’s strokefists cannot permeate the small treehouse in my mind where poppa’s smell of crushed sage and honey decorate the walls with warmth. i climb the heavy branches and press my feet against the grooves in the bark until i enter the soft cushion of his smell. it whispers love and i release my broken self and gently place it on the floor. i shrink into gingerbread size and enclose myself here.

soon i hear the sound of daddy coming home from work. i tip toe rush into his arms and he swings me around like a paper doll. he ruffles my hair and calls me sunshine. animal, daddy, and i sit at a tiny table stump. we eat banana nut bread together as daddy teaches animal the boundaries of touch. animal’s docile here and wags his head back and forth in awe of daddy. he helps me clear the table and then i put him in his pink cage. i give him a treat and pat his head and he smiles up at me.

we are only a family here — in the confines of these branches, the only place i can make sure daddy takes his lithium pills. daddy doesn’t beatbeatbeat animal (and animal, in turn, doesn’t beattouch me) because he can control the jazz in his mind before it becomes too frenzied, too intense, like it is about to ooze his brain cells out of his ear. he doesn’t slip so far below the bottom that he cannot get out of bed, loses his sixth job in the past three months, and leaves animal and i to find a way to keep the bill hunters away. he is our lion daddy here and finally he protects us.

–lissa

an extension of the characters in jasmine.