poetry & prose collection // perspectives
Allfallderon
There is a giant in Allfallderon. His language a mere vibration I cannot understand. When he approaches, some go still, others continue. The giant walks among us, either unaware or uncaring of the life at his feet. Occasionally, the giant moves so fast you feel the vibrations in the earth before you even hear him, see him. We call the giant Allfall. In the land where none survive long, this giant thrives. Alive for longer than our history dates back. These are the stories the aged tell over our beds, our heads, our deaths.
Beware Allfallderon, beware Allfall.
Yes we must go there, but beware. In the giants steps lie graves numbered unknown, uncounted, for who could live long past the giants life to count them? How many sticks in the ground can we stake in before our inability to accept becomes our greatest sin?
Beware Allfallderon. Beware Allfall.
In the giants domain, all fall there on.
one moment at a time
i’ve spent the past year and a half letting myself feel everything
i cried for the person i am now
i cried for the person i was when i started having severe mental breakdowns
and my world crumbled from the inside out
i cried for my childhood
i cried through terrifying loneliness and cycles of suicidal ideation
until it all settled down internally.
i thought it was going to kill me.
to be patient through the kind of pain i let myself experience was a gift from the universe
the thing is,
once you start noticing something,
you can never unsee it
it felt like the universe ripped a protective veil from my eyes
that i never knew i was painting with my own hands.
we’re taught how to build our own cages as we grow up
rules,
prejudice,
expectations.
then we paint our own veils over these bars
excuses,
victimizations,
manufactured explanations that bear no weight to them.
and we’re the only ones who can stop ourselves from seeing through them
the universe will keep tearing apart the reality you paint to hide the truth from yourself,
but it will not change that reality.
it can’t.
only we can.
but we’re so busy caging ourselves,
by convincing ourselves we don’t want what we want,
by believing the lies that we must earn self worth,
we must prove ourselves on the battlegrounds of
intelligence,
power,
beauty,
piety,
strength,
and so on.
but all these attributes are ones we give to and build for ourselves,
the same way we built the cage,
the same way we tear it down,
by paying attention
and changing our own minds,
one moment at a time.
The Fall
I settle into the present, captivated by the ever changing passing of time. Feeling the seconds kiss my skin with the wind. I find myself lingering in between spaces. Catching up to myself, breathing in the softness, the gentleness of a past whose grip has loosened on my throat, now a child who taps my shoulder and asks to live. Another one, a heartbeat away, asking the same. I give way to his curiosity. To her awe at the heat of the sun reaching across unfathomable space, for the intimacy of a distance incomprehensible to her childlike mind. She offers the thought to me, pouring from her heart, pooling into cupped hands, and I drink in the sweetness of her awe, warmed by the summer, the hint of a question in her pondering. I tell her I am not sure, it is a distance that even now propels me into fantasy.
She takes me by the hand and leads me along the beam of light the sun offers us in her other. The curious little boy follows, propelling sand, dirt, and leaves he brought with him off the edge of a daydream. So many selves within me saunter close, manifesting and fading like clouds evaporating, just to dip their toes in and out of the pool of consciousness I swim in. I am thirty one and every age before. At one point I had shrugged off the versions of me that I believed could not keep up with a world so desperate to race itself through time. I am grateful now, for the children inside, for the pain they let me see, so I could reroute my life into something as magical as this. Climbing along a sunbeam, despite how my wax wings will surely melt. As Sisyphus must’ve reveled in the assuredness of the weight, so shall I, in the freedom of the fall.