old women + sticks.

It's raining old women and sticks.

A Welsh saying contains my Saturday night in. Old ladies with clubs tumbling out of a barrel-rolled dark sky, and somehow I'm getting less shy admitting that the years are telling me to soften. Paradoxically, they say, keep your chin lifted and heart exposed. Funny enough, it's clear that the ocean has kept me on a speed dial, so when it rains, I know I'm getting a call-out. Two old bats, The Ocean and The Years, laughing at a young girl tryin' to trick her cavalier worry into behaving.

They tap on my skull, and wap at my hip bones. "Sit," they say. "Come take a look. Are your words in your body, like you promised?"

I've tried to move too fast around them before. The Years, she guffaws first. For her, time gets counted in lunar cycles. For her, it was only thirteen times ago the moon danced around me. This time last year, I celebrated putting down powder white doldrums in exchange for feeling the creak of my bones. This time last year, I wrote down that I was ready to love someone, to create something. I sat with the uncomfortability to my loneliness. Fearing the slowness that no matter how much clawing I did, I would never be able to sew back together the guilty quilt of opportunities I'd missed.

"Sit," they said. "Your mother is the seamstress. Perhaps she will tell you a thing or two about not running from your feelings."

I sat. I did! While the cancer moon waned in late December, I wrapped up my feelings… only to throw them against the wall later. The Ocean turned to The Years: "The Mother, always, feels it all. It’s been quite the year, feeling the depths, the limitations, the injustices. There's so much heartache in the collective."

I marched on my orders. It was dismal; I was childish. I am no mother, I insisted. The Ocean told me to go swimming, so I obeyed.

Wap! Watch your words.
Smack! Thank your mind.

They told me I wasn't to be an enemy, captive, or meek little thing that my thoughts could bully. They told me I had to make friends with a heart that was to stay bigger than my thoughts. They told me I had to be allies with the brainsparks that kept me awake at late nights, creating strange and wonderful things. I spent a spring, and then a summer, back at balancing glassware. Stacking my insides on top of homemade placemats. I made beautiful dances that began with poems. I planted gardens in the concrete of new homes. I peeled up the corners of my heart with a person I like⁠—I admit, I still ask weekly 'are you sure you like me?’—

Whop! The Years, she's found a piece of driftwood again: "That heart is big, yes! But I don't care if that one serves you characturie off a golden plate. You listen and you tell me this! What was the first heart you loved, the one that was bigger than your thoughts?" She's shot me a look, so I sit. I try to remember. No one wants to gamble with telling Fate the wrong answer.

"Mine!" my lips quiver, "The first one I loved was mine."

Two old bats, The Ocean and The Years, wagging their fingers at a young girl tryin' to cajole her old fears into an exhalation. Young and still silly, I sit here tonight, and it's not comfortable. I don't like listening to the whispers that I might be tired. Who am I to be tired? What kind of privileged bullshit is that? I should be up and out and doing things. Productive things. Helpful things. Things that make me look good. Things that earn me money, just... things!

My skin tries to hold me close, and sighs as it has to sign a little heart onto my cheek. My arms scoop me into a nest on the bed, mostly made of old socks, blankets and cat fur. My hands reach to make art, while they shake with the thoughts that want to retract the answer where my body is d.) more than enough. The creak in my bones answers the call from the rain outside. They say:

"We've got her, she'll be just fine. We've got her, we're holding her close and that big heart is still beating on the inside."

A Welsh saying contains my Saturday night in. Old ladies with clubs tumbling out of a barrel-rolled dark sky, and somehow I'm getting less shy admitting that the years are telling me to soften.

After all, The Ocean has me on speed-dial. So more often than not, I admit, I will have to find stillness as I sit and banter with the weather. I will have to be watched by two saucy old biddies as I handwrite love over and over and over again. I will have to quietly pay attention to the eclipse, to the sound of the rain and to the two old women with sticks.