[Did You]

ever want so badly to just pour out all the words that are feelings stacked like swallowed gods inside you, rock like, taking up space the feelings are. They are feelings of doubt and shame and sadness and anger and they have names like "Mother" and "oil changes" and "work" and there is this weight that pulls each of your once light steps down firmly into the earth where your toes get dirty no matter how clean you try to keep them.

You know you can't pour those words out. Everyone has them, no one wants to hear them.

[broke]

The Buddhists say we must create from a place that is broken/open. I believe this. Nothing broke like my water, not before. Water in an unbroken line, before. The darshan of the dharana. The one-pointed, the stream. My son, who breaks me open every day, keeps me sculling in the ocean of my heart. Lost at sea, so to speak. So, to speak, to talk of what is broken, with a mouth that seems closed at all the wrong times, to write with a sinking feeling, a coffee cup with cracks in it. We keep gluing it back together, broken. Rich in love, we are yet broke. Pockets of currency, currents of love. I need a break. Will it break me? Giving birth, sucking up death, facing fear at every turn, my seams seem to scream. Bursting. A heart as big as a whale. A long crying out. A smile at dawn. The day breaks me again, and the night closes over us. Cowboy sheets and covers, a hole in the quilt, he now knows the word "gun," and I'm done. Line break. Empty space. Return.