I'm gonna write ya what I know (or, the yoga of Gratitude)

Perhaps it is breathing through these cramps, leaning into the acceptance of them, and perhaps also slightly the Ani Difranco I haven't heard since high school, and maybe even the simple yoga positions I find help the pain. My heart feels ten times bigger than usual, an exponential expanding muscle, an obviously all-encompassing pal of mine. I'm thinking of my beautiful family and friends, their incredible faces and hands and stories. How I should be blessed with such beauty is a continual wonder of mine.

I'm set-up here on my older sister's little living room floor in her perfect apartment. She has decorated these walls with her love's paintings (including husband, daughter, herself). My lovely sister, my mommy-friend, the lady who dragged me out to look in dumpsters and introduced me to our oldest living female relative. She resides in my heart. I include her in my acknowledgement of self. I'm staring at my clothes piled high against my backpack on the other side of the room, mixed up with Mike's piled high against his. We have been wandering like hungry ghosts, like hobos trying to get home. My little heart and me, like stray kittens, really, accepting gifts of food and affection from strangers. We're residents in love, or so I'm told.

One of my older brothers, the last in the sibling line before me (and eight years apart), he's going through a rough time, has been for many years, I suppose. I'm formulating a prayer for him, and that's all I can say about my beautiful, intense and wonderful brother who cared for me so kindly when I needed it very much. May he simply know before he travels on how firmly he is held tucked in my heart.


It occurs to me I have prayers to offer up. Please be well. and be in joy.