friends are the family we get to choose.

we are dancing; three girls, one small with curly hair bouncing, one blonde shining brightly, and me. arms swooping and soaring like birds fluttering round each other, as feet move and jump; there is no music but we are surrounded by sun and light and happiness and that is all we need, we dance to the beat of our hearts, the pulse of love flowing between us. can you feel the crackle in the air? the electricity flowing between us? we are in our own world, where nothing can touch us, in this moment we are goddesses, luminescent with love.
we are on a track on the side of a mountain, on one side steeply reaching ever upwards is thick forest and woods, from which cracking and rustling can be heard as another of our group explores and wanders, on the other side a sheer edge of rock and slate falls downwards, on the edge of which is sitting the final member of our family, half watching us with a smile on his face, and half looking away down the valley. all i can see is green and alive, moving with the wind, breathing, if you watch closely. we are free from everything, from uni, work, money, all the bad and all the good things in our lives, and there is just. us. i try to remember this exact feeling, try to think of words to describe it so that maybe i can capture just a few minutes how how good i felt, how free i felt, how connected to the others i felt, but even as i start to run through lists of words and images in my mind i know that what i am doing is hopeless, i am wasting my time, feelings like this were not made to be able to explained in words, to be related to images, and i let go and just be, sunlight streaming into my face, sliding up and down my arms and legs, as i dance and twirl and leap and my soul soars with happiness.

stranger loving

sitting in a dimly lit dome, cross-legged knee-to-knee with strangers, i open my heart and hold it out towards them in my cupped hands, this is me i say, i feel this today. whatever i say is met with smiles, or nods, or sympathy, always ending with words of thanks for sharing, for feeling able to tell them those things that i hold so close to my heart, hidden away inside me. this is like nothing else i have ever experienced. love flutters round us, settles on shoulders, and lights up hands as they gesticulate, leaving trails of phosphorescence behind, a tiny cloud of minute particles of love and acceptance that fall to the floor, ready, waiting, to be picked up by the next person to sit there, and passed on and on and on.
we are all accepted here, we are all loved.

riding in cars

we are riding down slim narrow lanes, edged by trees and bushes and grass darting in through the windows, all 5 of us wedged into that tiny car which has seen so many adventures and been such a part of our lives. the sun is out and every window is open and our hair rushes from side to side and front and back along with the turns of the road and the wind through the windows. sometimes her hair is in my face and my eyes, sometimes his twines together with mine, brown and blonde and purple, loose and dreaded, til i am not sure where my hair begins and where theirs ends. the music surrounds me, takes us over, til we are all singing along, hearts in our mouths, on our outstretched hands, mine belongs to you and you and you and you, and i love you all and i wish this song would last for ever and ever, that this moment was all there was, for eternity. i could be happy with that, this moment of pure love, where all i am is love, where all we are is love incarnate, shining pure and bright, so brightly i cannot see anything beyond the insides of this car and your faces and god, i love you so much.

cross country love

i was not sure until today
that what i did was right
but waking up
next to you
sure makes the day seem bright.

a silly poem because this is too deep to express.
i have just moved from one end of the country to the other to move in with my boyfriend's family and him. it's massively scary and huge, we are starting a whole adult life together. i am scared, but i know love, i am loved, i will be loved, more than i can imagine. it's alright. things will be more brilliant than i can conceive.

past aeons of love sustain you

'Staying open, staying grounded, remember that you are the inheritor of the strengths of thousands of generations of life.
Staying open, staying grounded, recall that the thankful prayers of future generations are silently with you.'
http://www.streetacts.org/shambala.htm

just as i love you so do the thousands of people before you, whose blood makes up your blood, whose history is your history. they might be gone, but the love remains, glowing round us, cloudlike, billowing and moving to draw those towards us who need our love, who don't have enough of their own. some people have just tiny droplets of condensation, hanging on their twisted hair, gathering on their eyelashes; others walk in a mist, surrounded.

i will save myself with love

i love you, but i can only do so much. i could shout across the world how utterly amazing you are but you will only realise it when you are ready. you have so much work to do my darling, i cannot do it for you, i wouldn't even if i could, this is something you need to do alone. we are all on this journey love, alone, but part of something bigger, something that will turn the world into a place made of love and light and pure joy.

nobody can save you but
yourself.
you will be put again and again
into nearly impossible
situations.
they will attempt again and again
through subterfuge, guise and
force
to make you submit, quit and/or die quietly
inside.

nobody can save you but
yourself
and it will be easy enough to fail
so very easily
but don’t, don’t, don’t.
just watch them.
listen to them.
do you want to be like that?
a faceless, mindless, heartless
being?
do you want to experience
death before death?

nobody can save you but
yourself
and you’re worth saving.
it’s a war not easily won
but if anything is worth winning then
this is it.

think about it.
think about saving your self.

charles bukowski