borders

these days i find my edges blurring, & they're soaking up the rest around me. it's sort of like bleeding & all they have to pump me full is foreign. somedays is columbian & somedays its peruvian & other days its european, but either way, it never was meant to be mine. 

as my veins empty & others fill i'm losing my me & becoming more them & all that's left is a small glass cube...& the cube's began its shrink, & it's whispering its threats to crack.

she gave me a stone and it rests on my chest and he made me a ring and it lives on my hand but still my borders fade. i want to have a shell that you can touch but not one that you can sink your hand through and twist my insides. they're meant to be mine and they're sick of being swirled.

days of the south, today they're heavy.

tired

do you ever feel like words cost too much & your soul can't get enough sleep? i'm the most exhausted i've ever been...in every way.

i think he's who triggered most of it, being so hollow. the one whose heart got tired & lost its beat. i think his spirit's still here, stuck on its coffin couch and i can hear it sag. he's stepping on my chest, and i'm weary for it. two weeks with the heaviest ending, and none tastes the same afterward. strange.

part of it too is all the running i've done. i've been scrambling from hammock to beachy sand, from old friends to new, & i think all the forging has left me short of breath. 

so, i think the time's come to rest. it's back to hammock & beachy sand, & from new friends to solitude...then eventually back to old friends. i think peru & bolivia have something hiding for me, & i can't wait to have it unravel. just like i had to shave my head, & i had to move to a town i'd never tasted & without any humans i knew, i have to pound my feet in the southern hemisphere, for the first time, with no hands near to hold. the baby steps are getting bigger, but soon they'll lead to a straight spine followed by steps that are sure.

so i guess 2013's decided; it's a year for the found.

last year was one for the lost.

i spent one of its thirds lost in the physical sense. like the stranded day on honduran-nicarguan border, too-many-cordoba-short for a place to rest our heads. the first 2012 months were full of wandering, backpack laden & never quite sure where we were on the map.

the other two thirds were lost in the brain sense. like the day i knew i didn't know anymore & i had to pick up & burn a new world; that's how i landed here. i wasn't sure who i wanted to be, but i knew it had to be someone different. durango made that possible.

those three thirds led to last night in the champagne spray & the bluegrass pound & the dancing faces. i was lost again...but the good kind. getting lost in this mountain town crew led me to the miner's tavern, getting geeked out with some of the best this year brought me. it's funny how stomping feet & mushroom grins & high life cans can make you feel whole.

i don't know how i got there, but all i know is i'm glad i was.

with all the lost, i found some of the most beautiful in these last three hundred & sixty-five. like those mexican days of beerberto &  my new taco shop family & neighbor potluck sundays. even when i feel like i'm on a southwestern island far from those who know past me, i beginning to think old me doesn't much matter. i've found love & all i could ever need in each country, town, & bar that have met my feet, regardless of the me i brought to each place.

so whose to say if 2013 will be lost or found? either way, i'll keep burning or at least the world will keep burning me. i'm really starting to believe that i've always been exactly where i was meant; now to see where the coming places will be.

wisdom white

they say that rain is the wisdom of oceans & clouds & rivers falling back to it's rightful place; i think snow is just wisdom that sticks.


snow makes us wise because it makes us see all the dark spots.

it makes everything stand out that doesn't fit, & makes the ugly uglier. that's why road trips in summer feel so much more free; you can't see all the sludge your sixty mph dredges on the earth.

all those flakes make new mountain faces, bearded and layered. it's funny how snowfall makes our world clean & new; wisdom gives fresh perspective.


wisdom is knowing when to be loud too. storms are loud because they bury your car & your plans & show you that you never really have to do much of anything. i think sometimes i'm too quiet; or maybe i'm too loud to shut up and listen.

i think winter's trying to tell me something.

shadow secrets

i think winter's sneaking into my system, & it's full of shadow.

you know when you're trudging up a mountain and the shade's ten degrees less than the sun? it's funny how sometimes it weighs with all those thoughts you usually hide.

secrets always seem safer in the shadows.

the december still speaks to me the same way it would when colorado winter wasn't dead.
it says the things that my head buries to ignore, but sometimes they crawl out anyway. i've been drifting through those charcoal memories, the kind you're not quite sure happened just because you've tried to believe it for so long.

it'd be easier if they were just bad dreams.

but that's where the overcast mountain's been taking me, back down dark roads i'd rather shy.

it's funny how the past can steal from you if you let it. like how these ones are stealing my sleep & crowding my waking hours. it hurts that they still make me cower like when i was five & eight & nine & nineteen.

luckily the shadows today weren't so dark. he was there to make my mouth-corners look up sometimes. maybe the shade isn't big enough to grab me when i don't get swallowed up alone. maybe it's easier to choose sadness when it's just two feet instead of four. those books with my memories make me shake, i hope they'll keep their distance.

i hope the heavy shade will stay away too, i can't carry it's burden much farther.