If this tumor could talk

A poem about the power of what we repress.

A poem about identity, the dance between the formless and the form, and the power of what we repress. (More prose coming soon.)

If this tumor could talk

You never miss what is meant for you, but if you don’t hear the voice, it shouts.

Whether or not you understand the message,

the rejected Self will have their day.

That which is repressed manifests

as illness, injury, or worse.

The mind creates the body, the body reflects the mind,

as above, so below; as within, so without.

I thought it had always been there, that white spot on my cheek,

growing for so long, even my mother thought it was a birthmark.

It started that spring we got drunk at the beach and drove until we found the sun.

I was an atheist then, but my inner child still believed the church.

Only other people could be lesbians.

So I went to sleep, and I burned anyway.

My face blistered and swelled, I thought I would be disfigured,

but eventually, it healed, or so I thought,

leaving behind only a little white dot

under my left eye, the feminine side.

When the doctor told me they’d have to excise, I knew exactly where it came from,

but not exactly why.

I asked her to stand me on that day I dove into the darkness.

She wanted to, but couldn’t come.

But when I finally left him, she was the first person I called,

and she came without question.

I still didn’t know why.

The once-blind left eye

Too long denied

Permission to see freely?

You never miss what’s truly meant for you

But sometimes things do pass you by.

They don’t come around again in this lifetime,

and all you can do is mourn them,

promising the eye 

we’ll stay open next time. 

There have been others

and I still wonder

what could have been

if I could have just said yes.

Feel the pain, but don’t get lost in remorse.

All you can do is get back on that horse.

What was, was.

What could have been, wasn’t.

And so we spiral upward.

It feels like going back,

but it’s forward.

Formless versus form

Go out, stay home

Get close, pull away

Try again another day.

From the many to the one and back again,

this is becoming truly Human.

It’s not a baseless state,

something to be evaded and escaped,

in the place of no-mind and -feeling.

That’s just a place you dip into to remember 

that you are so much more.

Spiraling not out of control, 

but ever-closer to your core.

It just feels the same until you learn to center.

Trust yourself, that’s first.

And as you do, you feel the thirst

for true intimacy with another.

And that surrender scares me most.

Haunted by the ghost

of my own sexual power.

The one I feel has most betrayed me.

Relationships and sex feels like a death

more violent and bloody

than any physical one, or leap into the cosmic empty.

Which means that’s where I must go next.

Shit.