Okay, alrighty.
Hi everybody.
Um, i am here today to give an exciting life update.
I am performing a poem tomorrow.
It's a big deal, it's exciting.
It's my first time doing something like this.
I've done some open mics and that's always exciting, but i'm doing my first official reading.
I guess tomorrow it's just gonna be a nice little intimate thing, But I was playing around because I wanted to give the people who I was reading to an actual physical copy of the poem that I'm going to be reciting, which is 12 pages long.
But they're, you know, they're small pages.
It's more like little cards, right?
Like 12 cards.
I wanted to give these people in my life a physical copy because i thought it would be special to make something like this to sort of commemorate my first official reading, and i'm proud of this piece of work and i wanted to tell you a bit about it.
To believe in me is a almost narrative poem about continuing to believe in something and in yourself, or your dreams or your ideas or your visions or what makes you happy, even when you feel like you're at your lowest and you can't really see any proof of that around you.
I felt kind of delusional the past few years of my life because i've continued to try and prioritize the things that truly bring me joy and that i feel like i'm the strongest at.
There's a level of trust that you have to have when you have a wish or a vision for yourself or your art or whatever you know like whenever you are feeling.
I think i don't really like to go too in detail to what i write about because i want it to be applicable to any of you who can resonate with what i'm saying and sort of the feelings i'm trying to articulate that i don't necessarily know how to put words to in a normal everyday conversation, but that i can sometimes seem to write through my poetry and it's something that's personal to me.
This is scary, guys.
This is a big deal, that I'm gonna read this to people in my life tomorrow and that I'm holding a physical little copy that I made of this poem right here.
It's just.
These are things that have been so personal to me for so long, and a lot of my writing is just things that i never really intend to share that i know that i would like to because i think that others could resonate and connect with it, but it's something that has always been very tucked in my heart and i've shared pieces of it here and there on the internet, but not really anything extensive and this is something that is actually pretty great quality, if i say so myself.
This was a little like self-experiment that i did.
We just made these little booklets of my poem and i formatted it the way that i would want the reader to consume it.
And if you are interested in having one of these, let me know, because i could easily i'm thinking about maybe doing like little monthly zine booklets like this.
Let me know if you would like to get your hands on one of these.
I would love to hear your opinion.
If it's something that you're interested in, we can make that happen.
So let me know.
Let me know.
Um, i'm gonna read this to you.
This is a big deal.
I'm a little nervous.
This i keep holding it up like this.
I just like.
I like the way that it looks.
Um, this is a poem i wrote, called to believe in me.
No one in front of me, no one behind.
Here we go to believe in me.
This is when i'm most at peace.
No one in front of me and no one behind.
Driving the roads by my house at 10 30.
Thank you god for leaving the streets empty, Because now I can finally hear myself breathing.
Those dead weight doubts, I think that they're leaving.
As I lift myself into a higher dimension, the boulders on my shoulders, the leftover tension, softens then stiffens like crushed ice glistening.
When no one is listening, I can finally hear myself breathing.
And for a split second, It feels like I'm dreaming.
OK, I see how much it takes to believe in me.
Bright blue beads of innovation are pulling on my sun-kissed shoulders and falling from my eyes.
It takes leaving the tortured girl that I was behind because she kept me up all night, every night, plucking the hardships that I tend to keep confined in the parts of my spine that keep me upright.
Could you see the fear in her eyes?
I've started to romanticize the future so like glass I cut her out of sight.
She now lives as a fragment in space and time.
A mosaic in the light reminding me why I continue to choose to fight for a life that feels like a joke to describe.
She is a symbol so divine. a glowing grave in the garden of my mind.
To believe in me, it takes moving through life, feeling naked, holding a dream that is triple my size.
It takes believing in the night, the one that surrounds me as I drive, trying to maintain oxygen levels.
Dark blue me and you.
Deep breaths counting to five as I dive the lowest I ever have then shoot for the stars all in the same night, telling myself that all I wish for is right down the line, even if I can't quite see it tonight, with no one in front of me and no one behind.
My wishes live in an echo chamber, an energy shield in my mind that I've shattered, then reconstructed a shocking amount of times.
It takes, choosing the hikes, getting on the flights, melting ice with just the force of my mind and embracing the excruciating lessons that life has to offer.
Remembering tonight is only temporary.
It's spring and then it's summer.
To believe in me, it takes sitting still To let the snakes slither in the sweet grass, so green all around me.
Practicing beauty rest underneath the peach tree.
Emerald rings at the bottom of the springs.
I buried them there with all of my dreams, tucking them into silt where they sand down and solidify into little treasures for you and I to find, sanctifying those wishes that I whisper when no one can hear me floating in my bedroom, in the water, in the sky, with no one in front of me and no one behind.
To believe in me, it takes finding my dreams inside of the mundane digging in the mud, no matter what the day or how much pain.
I'm still on my knees in the rain.
Is the green on the leaves becoming a little too clear.
The glass is shattering and i'm finding pieces of it in my hair, and as soon as i find one, they keep on appearing.
Okay, i see that i can't leave the little girl in me to believe i must perform the protection that she needs.
Let me tear my muscles so that they can learn to mend.
Pull on my heart until it begins to bend.
Grow my hair out to remember how to pretend to be a princess again.
To justify all of my feelings and the magic of believing.
This is my attempt at growing up.
This is my attempt at healing, generating light in the darkest corners of this house, placing flowers in a vase, red in the face, with a hundred little wishes seeping from my fists like sand.
Believing in me takes ruining my plans and telling me i'm pretty, praying for a veil of protection amidst each city that i go to see, sandalwood sweeping through the breeze, tickling the palm trees, tantalizing me with a million negotiations and synchronicities.
Here I am on my knees with the things that they didn't tell me.
That I'd be hosting celebrations for the woman I've become alone inside my parents' kitchen.
A halo over my head, spinning in and out of the rhythm, welding wishes into realism, trying to find the right place at the right time.
Remind me.
Have I been paralyzed like a deer in headlights, struck by the sharp sting of real life?
Is this a renaissance?
Or did i just finally find it in me to leap over the cliff of limitation, comfort versus creation, bruising my knees and busting my lip to acquire the knowledge that i needed to fix the traumatized beast that beat down my door, the one that begged my body for more and more and more, the thief of my peace, feasting off the frequency of fear?
There's so many secrets I wish I could tell you, but my success doesn't live here.
It lives inside the pockets of time with no one in front of me and no one behind.
These moments of silence where I cling to false certainty, slicing through the violence that rings and rattles through me.
I see what it takes to believe in me.
But I'm just grateful for the stretch of the street, as I just have a few seconds to hear myself breathe.
You're starting to see the ins and outs of me, the sparkle that I want you to see, and I think that's a lot of me, but it's not the entirety.
I'm a perpetual headache, grinding in the heat, begging God to shower me in cold water, building my best machinery to fly me out of here tomorrow.
Because, of course, there comes a time when everyone is in front of me and when I look behind I can't hear myself breathing and these dead weight doubts don't feel like they're leaving.
My desires flicker, then fade, lost in a contagious cloud of doubt polluting my lungs.
With the tightness of how much it takes to believe in me, The cynicism swells like a symphony and I'm right back where I started, dancing with defeat.
Spinning in my slip dress, I begin to weep and the blue floods my vision, visceral and opaque, until I start to see the same dainty glow of light in the deep navy sky or inside the darkness of a lover's eyes, like obsidian, the ocean or the night that surrounds me as I drive.
I discover it exists in my own body and mind.
And for a second, I can faintly hear myself breathing.
Maybe this is what it takes to believe in me, so I'll keep closing my eyes.
Sometimes it takes just a second, and sometimes a tragically long time.
But until the light reveals its shine, I won't be giving up on these moments in time where the gleam hits the glass, the ice, my lust for life, the mosaic, the emerald gold behind my eyes, just as bright as it does when there's no one in front of me and no one behind.
Yay.
Yeah.
Thanks for listening and watching.
Love you guys.
Bye.
