Poem 3 of Shed My Skin: Poems through my divorce era
If my mind were a lotus flower,
It would open one petal at a time
Peeling back my uncertainties first,
My anxieties.
For they stew at the top like foam on a cappuccino.
Vanilla syrup, please and thank you.
Fuck that, hazelnut all the way.
For I’m nuts for keeping myself enclosed like that.
The second petal
of the lotus flower –
My self-confidence.
For that is what sits in the sideline,
Waiting to get queued up
Preparing to strike,
like a black mamba.
Almost too much sometimes.
So much that it paralyzes you
and chokes you up
So much that you don’t know
where to go when you first see it
So much it needs to be domesticated.
But I haven’t learned
how to be mild-mannered.
Not yet.
She shan’t be tamed
until she’s ridden her rides.
She’s having too much fun.
The third petal unflowered
would cause a weight imbalance
The flower would droop after this,
but for good reasons.
The third one –
My inner-child.
The wild, funny bitch.
The curious cat.
The explorer.
The questioner,
The person I have been
and should be at most times.
The one who belly laughs
and it sounds like she’s
going to puke or pee.
The one who knows
the minute details
of movies you’ve not seen
Yet she’s thinking you’re weird
for not seeing them
because they were important to her.
The one who wants
to press the button,
steal the show,
get you all to rock out with her.
The downfall of this petal
is exquisite
She is unleashed.
Now since the flower is now
almost touching the ground,
the fourth petal can be
considered peeled already.
But it isn’t
Because it hasn’t been touched.
And that is her feminine side.
She’s been missing that.
Missing it for a long time.
So long she’s somehow
forgotten it was there
Probably because it touched the floor
and got dirty
and she said, “Hell with it,”
She needed to be the man anyway.
Needed to support yet uplift.
It got confusing.
She’s ready to not be confused anymore.
But it is confusing
And it will continue to be,
until she finds that side and integrates it.
She cannot lose the man inside her.
He’s what got her to the second petal
in the first place.
The self-confidence.
But integration matters.
Soft souls, gentle touches, emotional stability.
Kindness, love, nurturing, growing.
A “Good job making art with your hands,”
goes a long way with her kids.
And now for the last,
but absolutely not fucking least, petal.
The piece for the maniacs.
The one that she’s been hiding
from most people for fear they’d steal it.
It’s the petal up holding the team together,
for it stabilizes.
Yet, it doesn’t.
And by itself,
it can work wonders, baby.
Things you’ve not seen before
but wish you did.
The openness to talking,
The inclination to reach out
and give it to someone in the form of a hug
when it matters the most
The ability to suppress the story about her
and instead ask another question
Hone in on the sixth sense that
the person beside or in front of her
needs to be lifted at this very moment
Her body wants more
but it’s not giving in
until she knows for sure
that’s what it wants
But it won’t ever know.
Because Love doesn’t
know the truth, usually.
It just knows “it.”
And sometimes “it” doesn’t tell the truth,
but it does tell a story
A story most certainly worth telling..
