Notes on loving myself: Death

October 2023

I thought I knew what this would be about. and if I wrote this around 4pm when I intended to, I'm sure it would have been that to the best of my abilities. but this is about shame and the way it eats up my insides towards a spiritual death. This evening, I felt everything I am vacuumed sucked from my chest as I tried to maintain composure with a stiff smile. Eszquire grabbing my hand and me wanting to crawl under a rock. What was I doing?

It all started at Jill's party on Thursday. Ishara and I rolled into the southside and quickly distinguished jill's house by the prple green and gold mardi gras beads looped on her wrought iron stoop fence. around the bend we found the source of the music: an upright bass, accoridan, violin and triangle tcuked into the corner of her porch as people mingled and chatted with drinks in their hands and platfeuls of snacks.

10/15/23 Return

What a time to be alive. Like truly. What a time to be alive and process life.

You kiss me soft and sweet

your heart knocks on my chest

and mine leaps into your arms

when we find horizons we stretch

and now I'm looking into the stars

and my body melts where it meets yours

Today I eased into autumn at home

inside with white socks and a weighted blanket

Today I smoked one hit then two

thinking of you

and all the times I said no to a smoke to protect my voice

and now I smoke to protect my peace

illicit my mind and make cheek for tongue

to stroke for time to carry me where

I need be

Autum is a slow moving death

Autumn is a colors show fade to black

autumn around my shoulders is brown and red rainment

autumn is crunchy and scrapes the ground

autumn slips just as fast and as soon

rain turn shit to gloom real fast

and all the colors feel like ancient past

but let the sun hit that bitch

and a blue sky

watch dying shit re-emerge story glow I survived

Autumn is the start of a revolution

25 in Sto-Rox

South Africa

Palestine

Autumn is a dying thing, walking every way

and in its dying we are amazed

and I'm crying I am too

at how much love I grew to have for you

and I walk every which way transforming while others catch glimpses

you helped me build the arc

when my world felt like it was breaking

because of you I never broke apart

Autumn is a falling kind of thing

deeper and deeper

Autumn is crisp cold

Autumn is bundled joy

Autumn is.

A time for change, a redirection to my roots and foundations and all the things people can't see. I am at home in Secaucus. I am a signed Creative with the BlackteaBrownsuga Network. I am writing and capturing to remember. I am making plans. I am practicing being still and in the dark. I am practicing embracing the light. First light is at 6:39 am. I will wake then and walk until sunrise and then I will sing and come back home and drink warm tea and pray and then I'll take it from there. In these dying times I take shelter in my unitary place, the core of who I am and what I believe. I dream for the explosive energy of spring and imagine I am spring in these dying times and I am spring. i am autumn I am. While at home, my goals are to be aware, observant and present, practice following my gut and communicating and creating. I want to word as much as possible and I want to improve my crafts so I'll spend some time on that too. Lastly learning.