Remember

Remember the evening we walked the beach by your house until the rain raced us home
how not even our fear of darkness was enough to chase us away?
later i caught an eyelash on your cheek
and wished for a million more evenings exactly the same,
the black strand simply flew away

or remember the night and next morning our kupuna sent showers to celebrate our love
how i couldn't overflow without apuakenui being moved by your voice?

Remember all the times we've been baptized?
Waimānalo, Waimea and all the wai in-between?
how there was no water that could refuse our skin
the way our ʻāīna and moana was constantly transformed by our potential

Or the nights i held you as you drenched my shoulders in your regrets
how i told you it would be alright
as another woman circled your mind?

Remember when you told me you loved me
and then drove to her house?
How i was the only sky that shook and shattered that night
as you let her breath slide back under your skin

Remember how it pulled all the water from my skin
until i was just wound and salt?

Remember the years we promised to each-other
how they turned only to days
remember all the love we left unmade?

Remember
Remember
Remember
you and me
as anything other than this way.

The Only STory

The thing about pain and heartbreak is that
it tricks you into thinking
youʻve never been hurt quite like this before.

and perhaps that true.

But its also true that every heartbreak you've ever experienced was insurmountable and you endured and overcame it anyway.

The truth is we tell ourselves two kinds of story:
1. She's never coming back
2. Sheʻll come back someday

but the only story that really matters is the one that forces you to come back to yourself
regardless of who comes and goes.

The only story that matters is:

         This two shall pass. One day at a time.

Forever

If only she knew 

The number of times 

A beautiful Woman has told me 

I want you forever 

Just not right 

now 

What is this black magic that has me

My whole life suspended in some static future I can’t seem to catch 

Do not allow yourself to be 

Another woman’s getaway vehicle 

Another woman’s way out 

Or escape

Not again

Every time I start my car 

My phone calculates the minutes until I arrive at your door 

It tells me that traffic is light

It should be just the length of this song until you are in my arms

And yet, I feel freight cars stalled on the bridges cast from this quiet

What I am trying to say is:

I am always acutely aware of the exact distance between us 

How if I am not careful 

Your absence will swell and fill cavity in my lungs so deep 

I will forget how to breathe

Try again

Listen

To the words

she says

The first time around

Watch how they build brick roads for your departure

They are Sirens

You should take notice of

Pay attention to how

You are offered opportunities

One after the other

To take cover

And hold yourself as the tender thing you are

Pay attention to the way you choose to refuse

How you

Woman of rock and lava formation

will shed skin after skin

Until you are the very shape of open

So that when you are left

With the same questions, you’ve asked yourself before

Wondering, where this distance come from?

Or how you arrived in this barren landscape

You will have the answers

You will not need to beg at her ankles for explanation

You will not shrink until you evaporate

You will know

You did not listen,

Take the time,

This time.  to heal

And then, try

again.

Follow

Follow the women 

Who take you back to the sea 

Who show you how 

To hold your breath 

And dive deep

Follow those women 

Who’s scales don’t cut at your soft skin

Who can see the way 

You never shed

Just carry 

Follow the women 

Who return you to the ocean 

In your joy 

In your fear 

In your every body 

Write again

when you feel

like you have forgotten how to write

fall in love

hide a promise under her tongue

wait and watch to see if she can taste it

let her go

off and far away

watch again if she remembers your taste

let the sad playlist ring out and shake the jealousies in your chest

when you feel again

write

One more song

How did you become

This secret song 

Afraid of it’s own melody 

What was this falling 

Out and apart 

That frayed your edges 

So far to blur 

you could no longer see

what was inside, out and in between 

How did you 

Make becoming 

A quiet prayer of forgetting 

Of slipping away into your own shadow

i am looking 

for that still place where the music waits 

for me, to breathe her into the morning

it is the only way iʻve ever known how to pray

i am looking 

for the woman i was

who once built a monument in the name of maybe

who was willing to fall for possibility 

i am looking 

listening 

waiting 

won’t you sit here with me

watch the notes bounce against the rafters

catch them in the corners of your mouth 

let them dance across your lips

with me 

won’t you

sit here

rest your breath against my palms

stay

stay

stay

just for one more song 

Moving Water

To hide in the ʻehu of someone else’s love 

Overflowing over me

I wonder: Is it the same

As hiding from the salt I have inside of me

as refusing to feel my own 

burning sea

A question to ask yourself every morning: 

Given the chance

What kind of kai would you be?

Would you be the open 

Moana?

The ripping tide?

The dark and deep blue 

so blue it has its own name?

Would you be the calm,

Mālie? 

The quiet, 

malino? 

The daring rough,

koʻo?

Would you be always moving moving moving 

Chasing the horizon

Or would you 

Stay here

Stick to the walls of this cliff called fear 

Forever