losing love

it is not every day i wear my colors, but i had them on yesterday as some piss ant was trying to get to me. but that is another story.

bedecked with binty bells, the small silver belly dancing bells, i used to make a tiny jingly sound. but now, i make a larger sound. strange how the library is silent and i'm the one making noise.

last night was an open mic which was attended by souls i am very comfortable with, which makes my life easier. especially because i was hit with some heavy news of a personal sort and i had to stuff it and press forward. that which doesn't kill us makes us stronger, so they say. but i'm not so sure.

my first poem, bloodlust, i broke into tears at the end. another poet cried with me. and said,

that is a powerful poem if it makes other people cry.

my eyes so full of tears, the words had to come from memory because i could not see. my hair draped about my face, i could not abide being seen. but there i was. fighting on. a good soldier.

the reporter showed up after i collected myself, which i was grateful for. small mercies, these. but i'll take whatever mercy i can get.

a poet whom i respect said,

your work is so vulnerable, but so powerful. like an emerging goddess.

it pleases me to hear, that when i am most frail. most broken. most weak, others see some strength. for truly, it is not mine. if i had any strength it is used in the times when i have to pull myself together and make breakfast for my child.

but this is the task of any who grieve. and my black veil arrived in the mail. a three foot long chiffon veil with silver coins on it. only, it was not black. it is blue. a curious confusion but one i welcome. i will not drape myself in shadow, though that is what i long to do. i will step forward in to the light. and grow from this. rise from this. live.

it is hard when your greatest champion falls. when the one who held you up lies down for the last time. and his final words to me came in the form of a poem. what strength it must have taken to weave those words together from dying breaths. from last gasps.

to have lived and loved, to have lost and rise from it. that is my herculean task now. there is beauty everywhere if i don't blind my eyes to it. there is life tiptoeing on the edge of winter's icy grasp (that doesn't really make sense, does it?), if i can just receive it.

i have lost a love, but not all love. it will be well. it will be well.