The turning.

The tide has gone out and left the little lost ones to starve for water. Others have swayed with the foam and held on long enough to return to their brethren. 

The cliff is the best spot to view the coming's and going's of the spells of my life. Legs thrown over the mantle of the shale and lichen museum, being careless. Being reckless without anyone noticing.

I write a note with my finger in the ether to let you know I still love. 

Loved you farther than I've ever loved before and its gotten me here. A beautiful dead-end of sorts. Never-ending sunrise and sea stars caught up in my curls, gasping on air and gulping for water. Sand glinted glitter tattooed to my feet. Earths ragged edges leaving imprints on my palms.

Calico, corduroy and cowboy boots piled high-half naked and adrift in cotton and lace. I fall apart here, in the pale of this reiterating morning of my mind.

There are only a handful of ways to get off this cliff. Jump, climb down, walk from whence I came, fly or dig in. And so I do.

I construct a fort right here. Recognize it is a terrible place to build and do it anyway. Build for survival. Build for aesthetics. Build out of the pain. Build even as the cliffs erode around the foundation and I'm left a singular outpost, an island in the encompassing sea.

Sew a flag from the remnants of who I was. Divine a symbol for the crest that is me and send it up the pilings that pitch the flag pole. 

Once a year bang pots and pans barefoot on the roof. Call the seagulls in and make them tea. Listen to their collected stories from life out in the beyond then shake their wings and salute them as they set sail off the balcony for another 364 days of fish and refuse, leaving feathers and seed kernels to germinate in my cupola called home.

(Their home is out there. Mine is right here.)

Until it's not anymore.

When my toes grow together and the scales begin to erupt I know it is time. I am turning once again. I break the mirror and lash a dagger of it at my waist. Place every piece of jewelry on ever given to me by any man who has ever loved me and left me and dive deep into the sea, for I am a changed woman now. 

Mermaiden mistress among the shells, no longer imprisoned in her own sorrow and beauty, swimming for her treasure, coursing through her sea.

Lust, the troubadour.

When my heart is broken,
I always notice the spilling over of love all around me.


Love arc's.
Venus disrupts
and the collage of contact
between
her and her and
her and him and
him and him
swims like the moon on water.
Wavering against each other in formation and reflection,
lovers stare into each others eyes
and I remember yours.


Clear-clear crystal blue Lake Tahoe.
I sink to the bottom,
weighted by my love of you,
drowned by the loss of you.


Things feel different at these depths.


Down here love doesn't leave anyone out.
Down here love doesn't say I am not for you
and you are not for me.

That's something quite different.


Lust acting like love to get what he wanted.
Lust, the marauder.
Lust, the bandit.
Lust, the outlaw
Lust, the troubadour who plundered my heart.


And deep in the wound,
in the soft moist ooze and sebum
of my broken heart,
a creature begins to form
sheathed in it's coppery dappled shell.
The tiny embryo of something from nothing
solders itself into existence.
Nestled between ventricle and artery
the scent of cinnamon and damp earth rises
and familiar sounds echo.


The scratch of eruption into becoming
can be heard

and a tiny phoenix rises
from my broken heart.