never again let your heart settle. never. again…

never again
let your heart settle.
never. again.
hold it close to anyone
who doesn’t see
your light-giving,
breath-stealing,
fire-starting magic…
or who sees it all,
and tries to hold you back.
never again.

– butterflies rising

for so long
i thought if i could just become. enough.
that it would be enough for him to be good to me
until i finally realized that wasn’t what he wanted.

he wanted me to be pretty enough
to be beautiful in his eyes,
but my eyes better not be too bright,
and that dress better not be too short,
and those lips better not be too full of lush and love
or talk of too much life for anyone else to see
something beautiful in me…
or heaven forbid,
for me to see something beautiful in myself.
and those dreams i had to find my voice and to spill
all the wild from my heart out into the world…
if i was chasing those dreams,
then i wouldn’t be small enough or sitting still enough as
the sure thing there waiting while he was chasing his.
the more i tried to be. enough. the more i became too much.

because underneath all the ways he needed me to be small,
“enough” is what he felt like he wasn’t.

– butterflies rising

for so long
i thought if i could just become. enough.
that it would be enough for him to be good to me
until i finally realized that wasn’t what he wanted.

because underneath all the ways he needed me to be small,
“enough” is what he felt like he wasn’t.

– butterflies rising

i love in flowers, soft
i love in fire, wild
i love in sky, free
i love in stars, forever

– butterflies rising

lay here…
safe in the
morning light,
soft in the daylight,
until sunlight becomes
skin light,
breathe in and
let the flowers wrap
you up in sweet
until the air comes easy
from your chest,
until the sky becomes
something you can touch,
and the earth becomes
somewhere you can stay
and still have wings

– butterflies rising

i love like flowers and fire…
i don’t know any other way.
soft and vulnerable… and wild
and burning… with my heart
broken. wide. open.

– butterflies rising

i love like flowers and fire…
i don’t know any other way.
soft and vulnerable,
and wild and burning…
with my heart broken. wide. open.
and even though he came in like wildfire,
he was just. broken.
and hardened. and filled with an
ugliness raging inside of him
and he thought that if he raged
hard enough against me
that he could rage an ugliness out
from inside of me too.
then he could say, “see, it’s you.”
that he could be so hard to love that
he could make me feel hard to love too.
but i just softly left the room.
a graceful exit.
and i wrote all my feelings down to shed
his hardened residue.
and to remind myself of all the ways
that there are such beautiful and tender
things in me… always.