Day 2: When the wave breaks, she creates

When the Wave Breaks, She Creates

I am a woman of feelings

 To live this life in full pigment

is to swallow a million hues of light

is to know a thousand different names and shades of darkness

My body is this moana of language

A tidal swell breaking

called every day into the moku’s sharp cliff

Come and watch the mess I make

Watch the way I crack and call it a performance of strength

Call me beautiful,

as you walk away.

I have been feeling a lot about what it means to receive

To call another body close

To see her tones and to know them as your own

To say, only what the body can

Through borrowed breaths and a stolen glance

To be intentional with the way your wave breaks across the surface of her cliffs

To know a magnetism beyond duress

I have been feeling a lot lately

In this body made of water

In this heart culled from the sea

My dark night pōuli

My dense lipo and shimmering ʻeleʻī

This bruised pōpolo

This hua that sprouts in salt

I have been feeling what it means

To look into a woman’s eyes and ask for her ancestors names

To dive into her pō and inhale deep

To learn to give thanks

For all the languages her body makes

I have been feeling a lot lately about what is left behind

All the times I have been left

behind

And what it means to try

To hold and carry

Rather than tangle and choke the shores that come close

I have been feeling a lot lately

Which for this ocean means:

I have been breaking and spilling

Diving and rising

But today

I am not afraid of my undertow

I do not fear my wreckage

I lust to be undone by your shore

Because I am also a woman who believes

That there are other women of feelings

Who were fished out of the same sea

Who lets her crystal ocean fall and shatter

And calls it creation

Over and over

And I hunger to dive in the waves her heart makes

To be close and hold out my greatest gifts of intimacy

And not be turned away

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