you changed
yeah, i did. i got better and stepped into my power and stayed in my lane and really they just hate to see a fucking girl boss winning don’t they? some people would rather you be miserable because misery loves company and people love acting like crabs in a bucket.
some people want you broken because they’re broken and it helps them feel less alone. some people see someone stepping into the unknown and they feel left behind and it makes them nervous, anxious.
it’s okay it’s okay it’s okay.
it’s not really my business what people say about me behind my back, that’s their cross to bear, their load to carry, heavy words and heavier thoughts, beasts of burden all.
i cant hear you over the sound of the drums on my path. i cant hear you over the sound of gunfire in my blood. cant hear you over the sound of a shitty truck driving full speed on the highway and i am rattlesnake and roadway.
i got better. clawed my way through, tore my clothes and ripped my hair and broke all my nails but here i am. i crawled out of sweatlodge a year ago and haven’t looked back and some people just won’t understand but i left behind the girl i was in the womb of the sacred earth mother and came out as a woman.
stopped wearing makeup
stopped shaving
stopped centering men
stopped taking burdens that aren’t mine
stopped being desperate for friendship
stopped accepting crumbs when i paid for a meal
stopped tolerating
stopped
a woman standing in her power and her grief and her rage scares those who are weak of spirit and my lineage survived the war and the reservation and the bottle and ive survived worse than a community theatre who took me for-granted. so fuck them. i don’t darken doorsteps of places who have to have meetings about if id be allowed to come there, debating my humanity like some kind of bureaucratic weather report.
i don’t go where im not wanted and i don’t beg people for friendship.
you can take me as i am or get the fuck out.
i survived the hospital room where my father died of the fucking flu.
i survived a man trying to kill me and i faced him down and prepared to go down like a warrior and he died and i didnt. warrior is in my blood.
im no expert im still learning and im just a student in this forever academy of learning but i walk my best in my tallest shoes to come through in a good way with good intentions.
forgive me if you can or dont.
i havent always been this way and im sorry i didnt always walk tall or come with my best. i was sick but im better now.
i cant wait for the things to come, to dance and grieve and live life tall for those who came before who couldn’t.
you changed, they say.
yes i did.
i had no choice, it was change or die.
goonies never say die.
and what do we say to the god of death?
not today.
not today.
o death. o death.
won’t you spare me over for another year?
i keep death guessing.
and you can keep fucking guessing too.
and i will howl to the heavens and scratch this manifesto on a truck stop mirror with turquoise rings on my fingers and blood under my nails and the ancestral woman’s song on my lips.
o, but, great coyote, who am i?
be gentle with me.
hospital vespers 