How to establish boundaries with the dead.

July 24, 2017 candacemorris 0 Comments

Hello 39, welcome
to Hell. I go
in a new kimono.

One mourning dove reminds us
"This is it. We are in the nightmare," she says.

If that is so, then here in the dark side of our dreams,
the gin glows.
Big chunks of labradorite gifted by the dead now become the gin's rocks.
Take the stones, drop them
in your drink.
In nightmareland, you eat the earth
she bounded on, anything to be close to her bones again.

Like the aboveworld, you carve time
out for yourself, but still in Hell you are.
You try to take a break
from grief, for self-care,
to visit the land of the before times.
Tell it, "okay stay outside while I get a massage."

Have you ever had to practice boundaries with the dead?

Grief is a clueless, needy extrovert,
a friend with no sense of solitude.
Gregarious as fuck.
No, you cannot come over unannounced
I'd prefer if you texted before occupying every synapse, bronchioli, and eyelash.
Still, Hell

I'm taking up residence here.
The rent is goddamned
expensive, but the views
oh the panoraming, expansical, multiversalicious view.





Dear Dove,
What are you now?

Are you the steam coming up from the mug you gave me?
Are you the smell of chamomile and lavender?
Are you the lightdance dabbling across my journal's white pages?
Are you the Mexican blanket shrouding my head?
Are you that cobweb, my cat, this air, this palm plant, that flicker?
Are you god?



I know you are new to it,
still learning how to be in this afterplace.
But when you figure out how to, will you please send the answers?
And also, your new address?

I'll be watching.


~your wise old owl

inequity

July 09, 2017 candacemorris 0 Comments

Little pink flip flops
Big green oxygen machines

New Prada sunglasses
Pirate eye patches

I have so much to tell you when you return to yourself.

I bought some lilies to plant
I weeded the dogwood bed
I signed up for a writing class
The raspberries you transplanted are bearing
The weird plant I didn't know what it was? It's fushia! Kelly, it's fucking fushia.



You're having trouble breathing
My lungs burn with my own breath
How dare it continue in plenty when you feel it in scarcity.
So I make it share.
I grab the deepestgoddamned breath I can
And exhale in your direction. A galeforce of life.
In those moments, am I breathing for you?

I have this desire to dip my fingers into claymud
Wipe black stripes on my cheeks
Approach the darkness as one of its own
war paint sacred
self-adornment

We all feel so shitty unless we are in your physical presence. We are disembodied until you somehow reunite ourselves with our own souls. What sorcery is this? You, always magic AF.
Oh how desperately I ache to take you away with me when I leave your house. To go west, to the salt water. To go shopping, to walk around the plant nursery, to have you stand at my counter and chop strawberries. Oh how guilty I feel to walk into my home and feel so safe when you are so scared.

Stand up.
Stand up.
Stand up.
Stand up.


Summer, meet cancer.
Cancer meet Life.