love to grow

love to grow

i. Baby Love

When I was a child, I spoke as a child
The most musical language I've ever known
When I was child, I thought as a child
A universe of imagination all my own
When i became a woman, I put away childish things
In the tradition of women since women became,
I traded my naivety for knowledge of evil and good

My first memory is a thunder storm
In the dark of night the Southern sky
Opened up and sang a lullaby

When I was six
I fell in love with love
The summer sky sang praises while I grew
And with the purest, boldest conviction I whispered to it "I love you"

At 13 i would sit at storm door in the front of the house that kept us apart
My mom called it shelter but I called it caged
And I sat trapped in sight but out of reach from my beloved
And I watched, listened, and loved as my beautiful storm raged


ii. First Love

My first love was dark chocolate
Bitter and sweet

My first love was a shoe that you really liked
But never fit quite right and just left you aching
But went so well with your outfit so you just kept wearing them

My first love came in form of a summer storm
He roared
His voice made the sky fall and the trees tremble too
And with the purest, boldest conviction I whispered to him
"I love you"

By then I was far away from the home with the storm door
I stood out in the open, arms wide
Even after he struck me , I didn't think to hide

We climbed to the climax and the view was so beautiful that I forgot to always look down
I didn't. Smiling wide, I dove head head first from a cliff into his sea of beauty and dreams and brokenness
I hit rock bottom
And at the tender age of 18, I drowned

iii. Forced Love


My heart stopped beating and my body lay lifeless when he found me
A sudden jolt of electricity resurrected me and I awoke to his face
Alas my saving grace

"I owe you my life.."
"Non sense, I don't want anything . No favors needed"
"Please don't interrupt . I said I owe you my life. I owe you everything.
I will you sing to you and come at your beckon call
From here on out please accept my everything . I give you it all"

A man will not stop a woman from loving him
Even if he does not
Even if she does not

I was 21 when he escaped the gentle suffocation that I called love
I cried a river hoping to drown again
But death never came
Why would he bring me back to life only to give me pain?

iv. Self Love

Since I could not die i had to live
With the only love I had left to give
My storm was gone but still the sun did not show itself
Day after day was bleak and gray

Until, in the midst of my nothingness, I noticed a voice
It not like it had just appeared
If anything it had just been ignored
She sounded tired, desperate, neglected
She begged for my help and three times I rejected

I swear it seemed like i was all she had and eventually my sympathy for her wore me down

"What can I do? What do you need?"
"I don't know. I want to grow, but there's no sun here."

She was a flower trying to bloom in a dark room
So I made renovations

I opened up the walls around her to let the darkness out
I tended to her day in and day out

Ok, I'm not a green thumb
There were times I didn't do my best work
Every now and again I would forget to water her dirt or give her more space to grow
But in time she blossomed and her colors, though faded, began to show

v. Our Love

My flower bloomed, her colors brightened, the smell of her sweet nectar caused a lot of buzz

Many came to her offering little but admiration for her petals

But one came and saw her soiled pot too
He offered her baptism in a fresh shower and aerated her dirt with life
And she grew anew

My latest Muse is a soldier in the army
He marches to the beat of his own drum
He fights in field striped white and red with cotton and blood

My latest Muse composes God's favorite form of art --
Sound
He speaks to Him with music...in public
My lover is a lullaby without the storm

My lover is cool rain hitting a tin roof while the sun still shines
And up above us
a rainbow forms
God says to me "See I promised to never to destroy your world again"


vi. The Greatest Love of All

I asked Him, why me?
And He said
"With all your filth, your sin, your dirt, you planted a seed in dry Earth. You worked this land. You watered it with tears. You gave it dim, but steady light. You watched over it day and night. You've waited for your seed to bloom for years now. You questioned if it was still there. Digging through your dirt over and over again. And when you found that yes, there it still lay,
You cried out 'why me?!'

You drained yourself empty to give it life, and finally you started to see a sprout. Your seed grew to bloom but not quite right. The stem grew twisted because it grew in the night.

Love is the greatest of them all and you were right to fall in love with it
But you did so out of order
You fell in love with the storm and you ignored the water
You lay on top of your dirt instead of diving roots deep into its center
You shut your curtains in shame and you should've let light enter

If you're soon plucked from the place where you grew
If you're ever cut down and need to start over
If you're ever trampled on, crushed, and tried too
Remember what you have been told
And pass it on when you are old --
Every living thing needs love to grow."