The stairwells of our minds are dark because there are no direct windows to let light in from the outside. Just winding hallways with the occasional waste basket that the groundskeeper has forgotten to empty.

When you’re inside yourself the only light you have to guide you is the light you make. Not everyone knows this, so there are some of us who wander these halls, looking for a window or anything that might resemble one. And they don’t know that they’re the electrician and the groundskeeper or that it’s up to them, to figure out how to feel ok again

If you only ever live along the surface of your mind,
you won’t see the undertow when it comes

when it sucks you under,
and drags you, deep
down into depths you never knew you had

I would fight this world with all I have  
to reach you

I’d dig my nails into the blue of my own sky
and rip from it
the light to lift you

I’d pull up the delicate threads
of time
and upend
this whole universe on its hinges,  
to rewrite your story

I’d tear the rings from Saturn,
from Jupiter
from Neptune,
to sew the cracks in your mind
with the sinew of star stuff

I’d drain the oceans,
the lakes
and the rivers,
to flush the anger
from where it clings like tar
along your soul
and leave you,
gasping and shivering and free

I’d smelt the iron walls
from around your heart
and forge you,
in the gold of the sun itself, anew

Just so I could turn to you
on my knees, and say
“I love you”

so you might look at me,
and say,
“I know”

The human mind is not tethered here, where life is happening. It is free to drift. To the past, our future. To other possible realities where things might have panned out differently.

We are the first stage of life on Earth
to be burdened
by the contemplation of time 

Its endless passing,
or the weight of it
lying ahead, just up the road.

It’s only natural
when we find ourselves
plagued by this
 
The past so sweet or horrid that it tempts us
to wade within its echo,
consumed in the pain or joy we may find there

The future insufferably unknowable
despite our mind’s best attempts to plot every conceivable outcome,
it remains,
looming and perpetual beyond a curtain we are never permitted to draw  
until we have already arrived to live it
 
until we are Here,
watching the opportunities
we hadn’t known we’d had
slide out of our grip, like air.
Innumerable pathways folding
until there remains only
one

It’s important to remind ourselves
that the past
is no longer happening.

That the future, though uncertain,
grows from all we seed Here
in these present moments.
So plant your heart
deep, in the soil

We must remember that regardless of all that transpires
there is only ever Now, and despite all that lies ahead of
us, even when we get there, it will still be Here.

Here

in the present,
is all we ever are 

Be kind. Be compassionate when it’s not easy. You are strong willed, a leader. Lend people that strength. Elevate them in ways they’d never have imagined they could be.

Do not remind them of the things that make them weak

Each word we exchange,
another breaststroke from the shore.
And there’s no turning back, I’m afraid
I’m too far out, heart draped in night,
the water far too deep

And you are
the moon that hangs
low and bright and whispering
above the sea

You are the stars that flicker
miles overhead,
flecks of diamonds
webbed across my sky

Do you see me?
Down here among the waves
indiscernible
from the ocean, ink
dappled in ripples of your light

And I swear I won’t drown here
I tell myself,
I won’t get lost in you

I’ll build a boat
from all the driftwood I can find,
I’ll weave a sail
from all the hope you’ve given me,
to catch the dopamine in my veins
like wind
and propel out of this

I tell myself
I’ll leave this beautiful, terrifying place

but my lips
are liars