You Can Call Me Eli

Whether on the polls or in the media or everything they say we claim and ya it kinda of hard to live in inside this world were if we breath in, ya know, just the wrong way than everything we do an say is is cast away, ya know, farther than tom hanks. And I gatta say it tanks that we live on storming banks instead of storming down the thanks, crankin up the wow show just exactly how bang POW! how astounding it is to be here that we can see clear the skies with new eyes and realize that what defies those expectations of un-cvil-ization can remedy a nation with a little imagination and some carefully watched intonation and this growing sensation that we care. That we’d rather be fare than right, we’d rather laugh than fight, we’d rather see crimson blooded brothers than different skinned others we'd rather stand as a human race than race for the finish line that just means you finished with the last line, but no one’s mind is changed, just a little hatred was exchanged.  It’s ti...

*inspired by Rudy Francisco* I am not a vessel. Sometimes I like to think I am. Like to think that if I allow others’ sorrow to fill me with all they have overflowing, I will feel fuller, think that the empty I pretend is there because I don’t want to deal with the full, can find peace in someone else’s tears. I am not a carpenter. It is not my job to figure out how to construct, how to fit all your broken pieces back together again after you have been used too roughly. honestly, I suck at puzzles and I’m wrong to think I can handle anything more than Ikea tables with diagrammed instructions. I am not your coach. Not there to be screaming in the stands protecting you from yourself and making bad decisions that will affect the team. I am not responsible for your responsibilities though maybe I use them to distract me from my own. I am not your therapist, Your nutritionist, Your mother. I know it feels nice having someone to fill every gap in your life. I know because that’s what I...

The broom squeaks, protesting my too tight grip that has lost the calluses it bore last fall. Dust mites made of cells from everyone who tried to touch me in the winter but shied away from my frozen skin, are stubborn against the bristles, unwieldy against the Tide™ of the rising Spring, reaching out to all the parts of me that don’t want to see them leave, don’t want to clear out all the dirt that has accumulated to make this space mine. Call me a hoarder, a collector of wounded souls, a grandmother who just can’t throw out her broken wedding china that keeps cutting her fingers. The soap won’t scrub away the crimson on her hands. It takes elbow grease to achieve a truly effective clean. It takes working hard, giving some of yourself even when it feels like there is nothing left but salt and water, which can burn the eyes. But tears can be turned into polish; I use them to clean away all the dirt and I breathe for the first time since summer, as the...