rachel-rhapsody

heaven is a wildflower it is if you believe in god i am an open field, deep water and i think often of the dead heaven is my head on the wheel i am undone by myself a little girl crying in your golden light heaven is a father's hug i have done nothing wrong but if i can't fix it who will it was never that important heaven is this soft animal loving in all the wrong ways and calling it right, and, the heaven im looking for is the end

at twenty eight i'm half a world away from love, holding the hand of a dying woman. i wish i had known to relish every birthday surrounded by life and noise and colour. i wish i had known that i'd be crying this way for the rest of my life and that the world only gets bigger and scarier the longer you live to see, it the decisions get harder and your body gets wider and the clothes don't fit anymore and the fucking dishes still need to be done in the morning. i wish i had known that death would visit a few times too early and that it would never leave, that i would hold so many of the people i love in my arms so that they didn't fall apart. i wish i had known that i would cry on the floor of my bedroom like the world was ending forever and ever because my soul is just tender and my patience short. but that it never really does end. that my heart was never really broken, despite how badly it tried to escape from my body. i wish i had known that there will be a warm cat on my lap to

meditation for a heartbreak for sleeping in the back room for crying over a little girl in a photo meditation for betraying her for you betraying me, for not knowing the words fifteen minute meditation to feel as though someone is holding you, holding her meditation for a slow, protracted heartbreak, for admitting what she could never be meditation for not wanting so much, so often, or for being too busy to remember to answer, spread too thin i'm only the sweetness at the end of the very thick bread meditation for remembering the value of the heart on your sleeve, for crying over birds

thank god for the stop sign the children on the road for the quivering of my jaw and the memory of my mum it will never be enough for you but maybe it will be for me thank god for the silence that thinks nothing of this scream

I walk around in the heavy heat, circling the city, waiting for a call that never comes. I think about the man whose name we don't know dying slowly in his hospital bed, blood spilling into his brain. I take the long route to get a better view of the sunset over the city. I think about how his skin was hot and wet but he opened his eyes when I held his hand. He will not go lightly. I want nothing more than to cry by his bedside because I know a part of him knows it and doesn't everyone deserve that at the end? I have watched more people die than I thought I ever would, and none of it goes anywhere lightly. I've pushed thinning grey hair back across cold, yellow foreheads as I listen to an empty chest. I hold the child in my chest and remind her that I won't leave without saying goodbye. I walk in the humidity and I am so grateful for the pain in my feet and the sweat on my brow and I call my mother and I am so grateful for the story she tells me about the snake in her backyard. The

You say midday when you mean two. You say soon when you mean later. You say you'll buy me a drink when you forgot about it the first time. You say you're sorry when you mean I can't help you. You say you're busy when you mean you're distracted. You say you don't have time when you mean you don't have time for this. I'm sitting with it and you're sitting in your car. I'm waiting for a response when you're busy replying. I'm taking the sleeping pill and you're prescribing them. I'm making up my mind and you're forgetting how it happened. I'll write the email. I'll cry in the bathroom. I'll wear the nice dress. Listen to the ted talk. Draw on the strength of my mother. Promise I won't do it. Ride this stupid fucking horse into the sun and hope it doesn't blind me.

my body takes up more space now but i have never been smaller or farther way, sounds muffled like being underwater, my tether here thinning with each return the truth is i don't know how to pretend anymore and there's only more work and less time to handle it gently; we are all tired and i need to leave i cry in the bathroom because in the morning it will be different i try my best to sink into the mud so i don't have to lie, move along so you don't have to tell me there are a thousand things to do, and i am one amongst them, another small part of a world that is just too big right now; i would rather be the rain or the night sky

my mother's garden has been uprooted. she is kneeling in the sweaty summer heat, her dress torn, praying for something to grow where nothing would before. she spent a decade cleaning clay from under her fingernails and i used to wonder why - now i know it is because what do we have if not the things we nourish. you only touch me when i ask you to. new stretch marks blossom like red dye on my body and i wonder why it betrays me. it expands, rooted deeply in the darkest of places. it is still warm, and soft, but not like it used to be - that's ok, we can find burning fires elsewhere. when you know a garden so well it's easy to forget it's alive. there is concrete and synthetic grass there now, as though generations of bees and frogs and birds hadn't called my mother's patch of the earth home. as though her unforgiving, relentless love and the way it smelt like lavender was not my home. the world's biggest mistake was not seeing that my mother's love was worth it. i am my mother's

I am the sunset reflected on the belly of the bird my mother's soft and wrinkled hands picking dead leaves from the ground, clearing the space between the world we inhabit and the one where the waves don’t crash so violently, the salt stinging fists raw and red from beating closed doors I am the furthest star in the empty night sky, the cold space between me and her and everything we reach for in the dead of the night; cold sweats stretched across nights and into real life as though it wasn't tough enough; a scream of nothing but frustration that cannot find any other way out because god forbid I roll this car and forget what it was I was told I am my body which is an afterthought; a milky white mess beneath the sun and the sea and the music; and and I come apart under the weight of the self that I carry, because it is at once a storm and a refuge and I am caught in the rip between the two And I am, I am, I am - all of this and more - but what is that but platitudes when I am here

there's not much noise at the end of the day, here. i move around in silence because if i speak i'm afraid i will scream. when my father hit me he would hit me again if i cried and there's a part of me that will always be 7 i think. it hurts less if you don't expect it. when my father drank he told me i could be anything as long as i worked hard enough. have i worked hard enough yet? i don't want to be anything except loved. how many times can water fall from a duck's back before the duck is drowning? maybe on one hand i can count the ways you love me and on the other i can count the ways you don't. i forget how many times i have to say i'm sorry before it means anything; let me know if i can do anything; please, let me show you how i want to be loved. i have been forgotten so many times i have forgotten myself; when i was four my dad left me at childcare until evening and i was still so happy to see him when he came. since then, i have forgotten because what is there if not the