Tiny robbers everywhere I look. Maybe I should close my eyes.
Distractions pull and tug like pretty lights that try to steal my mind.
I want to see the colors and shine but at what cost? How much of my heart is lost?
A fraction of my breath, just enough so I can’t breathe deeply.
A portion of the solidity in my muscles so I can’t stand steady.
A decimal of gravity so the room spins and I never get my footing;
feet brush the ground but never stay put, kicking about like a cat on her back.
A helium balloon without a child’s hand.
A chip on the tip of the castle of ice that steals the gleam.
The star is gone from atop the Christmas tree.
Family jewels left in my care, swiped before my open eyes, too fast to catch.
The match is lit and dropped onto my late mother’s diaries soaked in kerosene.
Father’s bibles lost in the move from coastal fires onto serene desert ground.
Grandmother’s bracelet full of charms from her life, picked just for me, sent to the house with no mailbox.
Twenty years, nowhere to be found.
The look in your eyes when you want to love me but I am somewhere else.
When you reach out your hand but I am asleep, or struggling to rise like pulling magnets apart or fighting a tide, or resisting the help.
A Peony seed trying to sprout in Winter. Dark, cold, dry bones splinter.
The little moments of morning before the words.
Early light cracking open our eyes.
The need to arrive to myself, and to the world that asks always for so much.
The elusive visions I cannot touch when senses are overridden.
Tax money over time, breaks and bumps in the foundation of the house, the waters of youth evaporate in our skin and garden.
I grip and grasp for the precious minutes that are mine alone.
For this is how I make a home, fully awake and fully aware. Ready to provide the care all of life requires.
If only I can stoke my fires to be inspired, the hearth will light and warmth will see us through the night.
So give me quiet in the morning and give me peace, and I will build a house with walls made of dreams,
held together with the nails of love and beams of presence.
Panoramic windows to the trees, to the lake, to the sky, to the worlds that feed our essence.
Then we can draw the curtains and let the light on in, and I can take your hand,
walk bravely towards the day, and tend our fertile land.
Copyright © 2021, Sheyorah Naify
Art: Quiet Adobe by Igor Medvedev .
I’m a soul in transit, documenting the inner and outer terrain, often through poetry and prose, sometimes through songs, and occasionally through photos, essays, confessionals, and other mediums. This is how I breathe.
Creature Speak 