New Beginnings (A Poem)

There's something about a sunrise
like staring deep into your eyes
remembering them open wide
telling me "Baby, look! The Sun!"

Holding me is pale pink,
orange, yellow, all I think
is the colors make my heart sink
back to the hammock, in your arms.

The sky becomes a light blue
recalling sunrises with you
Are you here for this one too?
The warmth tells me "Yes."

After all the painting is done
many colors fade to just one
highlighting the beauty of the Sun:
a symbol of the new.

When Your Words Don't Matter

Last night I left the bar to go home because a guy made me feel extremely uncomfortable. After acknowledging my fear of new men, I've made an effort to clearly state what I want and don't want without being rude, but firmly enough to get my point across. The reason I panicked last night was because I discovered how powerless you can feel when your words don't seem to be enough.

To make a long story short, this guy did not seem to understand that when I said, "You're making me uncomfortable, can you please stop," and "I'm not ready," I meant it with complete sincerity. This was not me inviting him to try harder and push until I changed my mind. This was not a challenge. Even after a friend of mine explained to him that my boyfriend recently died, he still came back at me with, "I could be the guy to help you forget about him."

This is not flattering to me. This is terrifying and disrespectful.

After I realized he wasn't budging on his insistence that going out with him was best thing for me, I told him I needed to leave. I got up, walked outside, and hailed a cab home. I did what I had to do to feel safe. But on the way to my apartment I was quick to start looking for ways to blame myself for what happened. Did I come off too friendly in the beginning? Was it my fault for accepting a drink from him in the first place? Should I not be in bars at all?

Although I never felt like he was going to physically violate me, undermining the weight of someone's words is almost as debilitating. What gave him the right to insist that he knew what I needed better than I did? What I say should be a factor in my interactions with others. My words matter.  When that isn't honored, it can make a person feel insignificant. If what I said didn't register with him, maybe what I want isn't important. It made me start thinking that I was wrong.

But after a lot of reflection, I decided my question to myself shouldn't be "Was he right?" but instead, "How can I build my own confidence to insure that the opinions of others don't rattle it?" I need to shift the focus away from this man (and other men) and his actions. I will never understand why people do the things they do and I definitely won't be able to alter their actions. Just as they must decide for themselves to change, so must I.

Last night I didn't leave the bar to go home because a guy made me feel uncomfortable. I left because I allowed myself to feel uncomfortable. Yes, the choices he made in his interaction with me were questionable (in my opinion), but I gave him the power to affect me. By taking what he said to heart, I granted his words the permission to get under my skin. I allowed what he thought to mean more to me than what I thought.

Although I am by no means condoning how he treated me, I need to focus on my part in the situation. Because what I do, say, and tell myself is all I have command over. I will give myself consent to leave a bar if I have to. I will allow myself to tell any guy to back away and feel good about my decision to do so. And I will promise to remind myself that if I listen to my heart, it will never lead me astray. Because I am the master of what I do and think, and my words matter.

Lost Lips

Blake and I would have to go weeks without kissing. With me in California and him in Arizona, sometimes our lips had to be hundreds of miles apart. During those periods, they would wait impatiently on our faces. Once they knew each others' touch, an existence quietly perched between nose and chin would never be enough. After they tasted sweet purpose, they changed. They knew how it felt to come alive, so they lived in anxious anticipation of their next embrace.

Especially after longer gaps between reunions, our lips met with overpowering urgency. It was as if they had been holding their breath all along and were finally able to greedily gulp in oxygen. They were completely consumed with each other. Inseparable to the point that it was hard to tell where one set ended and the other began. So when one set ended, the other couldn't begin again.

Now my lips are just lips. 
They no longer get the chance to feel and lust and love. They reluctantly hold their place between my cheeks and resent me for leaving them there. Filled with memories of when they used to dance freely, my lips fight to imagine their phantom partner. They fall silent in defeat, waiving a white flag to signal their surrender. And so they lay dormant. In defiant refusal to live a life any less than the extraordinary one they once knew.

But even though hope is faint, they still cling onto the dream that maybe one day
they will come alive again.