When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it is over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
Mary Oliver
Excerpted from
When Death Comes
i bleed each month to help make humankind a possibility. my womb is home to the divine. a source of life for our species. whether i choose to create or not. but very few times is it seen that way. in older civilizations this blood was considered holy. in some it still is. but a majority of people. societies. and communities shun this natural process. some are more comfortable with the pornification of women. the sexualization of women. the violence and denigration of women than this. they cannot be bothered to express their disgust about all that. but will be angered and bothered by this. we menstruate and they see us as dirty. attention seeking. sick. a burden. as if this process is less natural than breathing. as if it is not a bridge between this universe and the last. as if this process is not love. labour. life. selfless and strikingly beautiful.
Rupi Kaur
There will always be voices that promise you greatness and glory:
They call out from the worldly marketplace;
They call out from the spiritual marketplace;
They call out from the fill-your-holes marketplace;
They call out from the bigger-better-more marketplace.
Do not buy their false promises, or purchase their ephemeral wares;
What fulfills for a moment is not worth the price of your soul.
There are heights that will lift you, but not when you try to ascend them;
There are powers that will fill you, but not when you make them your own.
There are treasures, and then there are imitations of treasures.
If you have lost your true gold, at least turn away from the glitter.
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.
In out of the way places of the heart
Where your thoughts never think to wander
This beginning has been quietly forming
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
Love sorrow. She is yours now,
and you must take care of what has been given.
Brush her hair, help her into her little coat,
hold her hand,
especially when crossing the street. For, think,
the universe took its time on you
crafted you precisely
so that you could offer the world
something distinct from everyone else
so when you doubt
how you were created
you doubt an energy greater than both of us
Rupi Kaur
Tonight, Pluto, with the crescent moon as my witness,
I welcome you as my lover.
If you have come to break down my door,
See, I have opened it,
And wait for you at its threshold.
And if you have come to tear off my clothes,
I have flung them aside already,
And stand naked, shivering gladly.
If you have come to hurl me into the abyss,
Watch now, as I release all false supports, one by one,
And fall toward you in ecstasy.
Hear this, Pluto, lord of transformative fire:
What you have come to take from me, I offer you.
Jennifer Welwood
I am a lover without a lover. I am lovely and lonely, and belong deeply to myself. — Warsan Shire
you are a horse running alone
and he tries to tame you
compares you to an impossible highway
to a burning house
says that you are blinding him
that he could never leave you
forget you
want anything from you